quick question

[Dick Justice]

Why do trees grow bananas? I know apple trees grow apples cause apples have seeds that get eaten and transported around by the feces of whatever ate it, spreading the apple tree population. But bananas don't have seeds, do they? Do I not know about them? I just don't understand how it aids the tree to grow bananas. And if there is no reason and it turns out to be just a nice little gift, it belongs with marijuana in the category of nature's nice little gifts.

Dick Justice Reviewed by Dick Justice on 06-06-2005. quick question Why do trees grow bananas? I know apple trees grow apples cause apples have seeds that get eaten and transported around by the feces of whatever ate it, spreading the apple tree population. But bananas don't have seeds, do they? Do I not know about them? I just don't understand how it aids the tree to grow bananas. And if there is no reason and it turns out to be just a nice little gift, it belongs with marijuana in the category of nature's nice little gifts. Rating: 5

[Beeblebrox.420]

From here:

A fruit is the ripened ovary of a plant, and it holds the plant's seeds. Fruits grow from a plant's flowers, and bananas do all of these things! Banana plants have flowering stems, and when the flowers mature, the ovaries inside them become bananas. In some types of banana, you can see very tiny seeds right in the center of the fruit. But many of the bananas you get at the grocery store are purposefully made to be seedless. Specialty stores sell banana seeds so you can grow your own plants. Banana plantations grow new plants by taking a fleshy bulb called a rhizome or a sucker off an old plant, and then planting the rhizome. I hope that clears everything up about this appealing fruit!

[Stedric]

Because of genetic engineering, we may not be seeing bananas much longer.

[Beeblebrox.420]

Because of genetic engineering, we may not be seeing bananas much longer.

WTF are you talking about?

[RidingHigh]

yea wtf?

[Stedric]

WTF are you talking about?

I would have explained more but I doubted anyone would care.

Have you seen how big our bananas are? That is not normal. Bananas have been genetically engineered so only the larger ones are reproduced for food. The upside is we have very large bananas. The downside? Very low gene pool diversity among bananas, so the second a disease comes along every banana on the planet is wiped out.

Resistance to disease depends almost entirely on genetic diversity in the genotype of a species.

[Beeblebrox.420]

Um, no. Bananas and other food crops are larger and generally more productive than than their natural counterparts due to selective breeding, not genetic engineering. Genetic diversity is immaterial to produce crops, since their populations are almost entirely dependant upon human care for survival, anyway. Almost all domestic crops still have their wild precursors around, with some exceptions, so there is as yet little worry that a major crop failure will wipe out an entire species.

[mono repin]

Hmm, interesting, but... there are lots of different types of bananas. You can get small ones, its just in the major grocery stores they carry primarily big ones. So a disease = 1+ years of bad crops, but its not like bananas will dissappear, they will simply take a while to bounce back.

[Dick Justice]

Well I sure learned a lot about bananas here today, didn't you, boys and girls?

Thanks for the answer!

[mono repin]

Well, basically what I just said is a paraphrased version of what beeblebrox. said, I missed his post.