Michael Hill, age 10, of Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, for his question:
Where do they get seeds to grow banana trees?
There is a stony pit inside a plump peach and a family of pips in the core of a juicy apple. These seeds can sprout into new fruit trees. A raspberry is riddled with gritty little seeds and so is a blackberry. However, you can search and search, but you will never find a seed in a banana.
Most plants grow from seeds, but many others have other methods of handing on life to the next generation. What's more, the growing of peach and other fruit trees from seeds is not so simple as you might suppose. True, a new tree will sprout from the pit of a peach,
But without help, its fruit will be poor or it may not bear at all. In order to deserve a place in a healthy orchard, the young seedling must be grafted with a twig from the bough of a fruitful peach tree. Apples and plums, pears and apricots also grow best on grafted trees.
However, we cannot grow a banana tree from a seed or graft it onto a seedling sprout: The friendly plant has no woody material in its trunk, so actually it is a herb. The banana herb grows 20 feet tall and it looks like a wide, shady palm tree. But no part of it produces seeds. Anew plant springs up from the ruins of the parent plant. It thrives and grows to its full height in about 14 months. Then it bears its fists of banana fingers and withers away.
The secret of next year's crop is in the ground. The banana herb grows from a shallow rootstock, and this rootstock survives from year to year. The withered herb decays and its chemicals break up to add rich plant food to nourish the rootstock in the soil. Soon after the banana bunches are harvested, the rootstock sprouts a slender spike. A tender green shoot of furled leaves pokes up through the loose, damp soil and the next generation is on its way.
The same old rootstock will go on producing new banana plants for years. But it can be moved or used to produce a whole new grove of bananas. The rootstock fingers its way through the soil, producing roots and shoots as it goes. If a root bearing section is cut off, it can be planted in loose, moist soil and left to grow. Anew shoot of furled leaves forms a fast growing trunk and in a year it may be 20 feet tall. No more leaves are needed to form the trunk a94, about twenty new leaves begin to spread out in a green umbrella. Each palmy leaf may be two feet wide and 12 feet long banana trees.
Soon a thin stalk sprouts from inside the green umbrella. It is dotted with bumpy buds and the slender stem begins to sag downward. The buds become a cluster of yellow blossoms. The petals fall, leaving rings of miniature bananas around the hanging stem. Soon the stubby green fingers turn up their tips toward the sky. They grow to full banana size and the heavy bunch of fruit is harvested before the skins turn banana yellow.
The banana stalks are soft and the heavy bunch of fruit can be cut dawn with a knife. On the tree, the fat, green fingers pointed upward. Now the big bunch of bananas is turned upside down. It is stored in a shady shed where the temperature is kept around 64 degrees. In about a week, the fat, green fingers will turn to yellow. The delicious bananas are ripe and ready to be served with sundaes and cereals.