10 fun facts about bannanas

 

Here are 10 bannanas fun facts that you should know

1 - The scientific name for the banana is musa sapientum, which translates to ‘fruit of the wise men’.

2 - Bananas float in water, and so do apples, and also the heavy watermelon.

3 - Bananas are picked unripe from the tree and left to slowly ripen.  The hotter the environment, the faster they will ripen. 

4 - Bananas used to contain so many bitter black seeds that they were pretty much inedible. Now the cultivated banana is extremely easy to eat and very delicious.

5 - Bananas originated in Southeast Asia around 8000 to 5000 BC.

6 - Bananas contain many essential vitamins and minerals such as potassium, fibre, vitamin C, calcium, and iron.

7 - In Japan, and other cultures, they use the fiber in the banana plant to make fabric and even paper.

8 - We eat more than 100 billion bananas every year worldwide.  This helps bananas to repeatedly feature in the top 20 most popular agricultural products.

9 - Bananas are believed to have been the world’s first cultivated fruit. From Southeast Asia, the fruit was brought west by Arab conquerors and then carried to the New World by explorers and missionaries.

10 - A banana plant is actually a herb! The largest herb in the world, and in the same family as the palm tree. Each plant grows a cluster of bananas called ‘hands’ of up to 200 bananas. Each hand contains 10-20 bananas which are called ‘fingers’.