Friday 24 August 2012

Banana seeds

Banana fruits are classified botanically as berries (fleshy fruits with many seeds).  Also the plants are botanically herbs because they don't have a woody stem; their "trunks" are made up of overlapping tubular leaf bases.  The fruits of the commercial varieties are seedless, and just as well too.  This works because the plants can be propagated vegetatively.  However their "unfortunate sex life" means there's little genetic variation in the cultivated stocks, so bananas are always at risk of being wiped out by a crippling disease.

Those little brownish dots inside a banana are the ovules, not seeds.   

These are the seeds:
Banana seeds, from a plant cultivated at Paekākāriki; scale 10mm long.

They're big and hard; you wouldn't want to bite down firmly on one of these.  (Thanks Joe, for bringing these in.)

1 comment:

  1. Phew, I was concerned the black bits might be tarantula eggs.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd9s-ICtm9M

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