Banana plant flowers vary from red to purple and contain both male and female flowers. After pollination by bees and insects, female flowers develop into fruit, male flowers wither and die.
After tasting the fruit of the banana plant, farmers in other tropical areas enthusiastically planted the slips to grow the plants.
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Banana plant flowers vary from red to purple and contain both male and female flowers. After pollination by bees and insects, female flowers develop into fruit, male flowers wither and die.
Botanist Carl Linnaeus gave bananas the scientific name Musa from the Arabic word for banana, muz or musa. Or mauz. They originally grew wild in the tropics of Southeast Asia but cuttings of the plant were easily transportable by Arab traders plying the seas more than 2,000 years ago.
Muslims called the plants “trees of paradise” so the name of our most popular one became musa x paradisiaaca. (The x was added when they discovered it was hybrid.) Botanists have a wildly conjured array of scientific names for the many varieties of bananas. Musa was a doctor to the first Roman emperor, Augustus. No one knows why Linnaeus wanted to honor him.
Key West Master Gardener Robin Robinson was a columnist for the Chicago Daily News. Her books “Plants of Paradise” and award-winning “Roots Rocks and Rain: Native Trees of the Florida Keys” and the newest addition, “Sexy Shrubs in Sandy Soil,” can be found at the Garden Club. This column is part of a series developed by the Key West Garden Club. For information about plants, visit a compilation of previous columns at http://www.keywestgardenclub.com, Robin’s Columns.
