Did you know that what we call a banana tree is not a tree at all? Or that a banana is actually an herb AND a berry? Learn more bizarre botanical facts about this misunderstood tropical perennial plant, which can actually be cold-hardy down to zone 5 if you choose the right variety for your climate.
I’m not much of a banana person (unless it’s cooked in rum and butter, though that combo will make anything taste divine), but I loved having banana trees around when I used to live in zone 10b.
Among the many trees that grew in my Southern California garden years ago, there was an abundance of bananas flourishing year-round, all in different stages of ripeness.
A few of them even grew over my hammocks and infused such a balmy and tropical feel to the setting, it was easy to forget that we lived in the city with foghorns blowing from the Port of Los Angeles every day.
Even though I call them “trees,” they’re actually plants—and to be more specific, banana plants are herbaceous perennials. In other words, herbs.
They’re one of those things in life that aren’t what they seem to be, the way tomatoes are technically fruits (not vegetables) and dandelions are herbs (not weeds).
Bizarre botanical fact #1: A banana is an herb.
That’s right—a banana plant is technically a large herb, distantly related to another garden rhizome, ginger. While most people think of basil, parsley, or rosemary when they think of herbs, it’s easier to see how a banana can be an herb if we look at more “exotic” herbs like lemongrass, horseradish, and wasabi. A banana is considered an herb in botanical terms because it never forms a woody stem (or trunk) the way a tree does. Rather, it forms a succulent stalk, or pseudostem. The pseudostem begins as a small shoot from an underground rhizome called a corm. It grows upward as a single stalk with a tight spiral of leaf sheaths wrapped around it. Banana leaves are simply extensions of the sheaths.
Bizarre botanical fact #2: A banana is also a berry.
During the flowering stage, an inflorescence (also called a banana heart, as it emerges from the heart of the plant) appears on the end of the stem. It is usually a long, tapered, tightly wrapped, deep purple bud.
Bizarre botanical fact #3: Banana anatomy was coined by slave traders.
A hanging cluster of hands on a banana plant is called a bunch, with each bunch holding 7 to 14 hands of bananas. As you likely guessed, individual bananas on a hand are called fingers.
Bizarre botanical fact #4: Modern bananas have been bred to be sterile… but they DID have seeds at one point.
A plant produces a single crop of bananas and then dies, propagated only by new shoots from the corm. Each of these shoots (pseudostems) goes on to live for only two to three years, but because the corm can survive for many years, the banana plant’s reproductive process is unique for a fruit. Bananas are bred as parthenocarpic plants and don’t require any pollination to produce fruit.