We're having bananas!

[sutherwinds]

My banana tree is having babies:

Comments

[bluemeanybeany]

got to say the whole....pod-like-structure...is a hell of a lot bigger than I would have thought, is the purple thing at the bottom a bud?

[sutherwinds]

I don't know actually. We call it chira, the farmers say that when it shrinks the bunches are ready. I'll keep you informed on the development. It takes like 2 or 3 months from now till the bananas look like bananas. Then, we have to fight the birds, because they love the fruit. It is odd, because we had another harvest last year. My mother was the first one to see it and she came to the backyard every day to take a look. One year exactly.
Other funny thing about banana trees is that they have baby banana trees. We don't have to plant them, they reproduced by themselves and when the old tree dies there's another right next to it. That's why they say that these trees move, because the new one will be inches farther than the old one.

[sutherwinds]

You can see the youngest tree on the left, stretching its leaves to be in the picture. Show off.

[bluemeanybeany]

it has cause to show off, i've never seen anything like it, to the point that i dont know what words to use to describe the appendages. Like where was the flower for the pollination, that's what I cant figure out, does it have one flower or many littler ones that all need pollination.

[sutherwinds]

This is what I found (I never thought about the origin but here it is:)
The chira rolls up like in petals and the flower comes first with the banana right behind it.
Then, the seeds are spread around the mother tree and that's it. You can also plant branches, that btw are leyers of leaves rolled together more of less like the onion.

[bluemeanybeany]

Oh so each banana has it's own little flower, that's so cool, I was wondering if they were gentically identical, but they wont be they'll be half-sibling most likely.