Plants in Art II (bananas) Flashcards
Book: Where does the word banana come from?
West Africa
Book: What kind of fruit is a banana?
A berry
How does a banana propagate?
Vegetatively, not from a seed.
What 2 things does the corm of a banana produce?
- A main pseudostem
2. A subsidiary corm
How did the flowers of the banana plant become sterile?
Through artificial selection.
How do female banana flowers produce fruit (name of this process)?
By parthenocarpy.
Why are cavendish bananas (the only banana we have) picked green?
Because they bruise easily during transport if yellow.
How are bananas artificially ripened prior to sale? What effect does this have? What would otherwise occur?
Ripened using ethylene (C2H4). Turns them the “electric yellow” colour we associate with bananas, otherwise they’d be more yellow-green.
What is the no. 1 fruit consumed in North America?
The banana.
Where do bananas grow?
Only in the tropics. They tried to grow them in Florida but that didn’t work out.
By combining bananas with ____, you can get every nutrient you need for survival.
Milk.
At what time of year do bananas produce fruit? Why does this make them an ideal crop?
All year round! So duh they’re just a really reliable food source for tropical people.
Where was the banana domesticated? What else was domesticated here?
In Papua New Guinea, also where the pig was domesticated.
How long ago were bananas domesticated? How do we know?
~10 000 years ago. We found banana phytoliths in a really old swamp.
What 2 species of banana (Musa) have long been subject to artificial selection, hybridization, and mutation, in order to get the bananas we have today?
Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana.
