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2.4.15

A-Z challenge B = BANANAS

DAY TWO OF THE A-Z CHALLENGE 2015

To people of my age (blushes girlishly and declines to reveal exact figure) BB = Brigitte Bardot, but since I joined a writers' forum those letters represent another A-Z Challenger. Check out her blog about Rome.  http://atozofrome.blogspot.co.uk/

BB and I share a passion for bananas, though the reason why is lost in the mists of time.
The following photographs represent the life-cycle of a banana from flower to fruit.

This is only a small tree in our community garden but the flower was half a metre long.



Here the petals are curling back to reveal the individual hands of infant bananas.


Almost ready to ripen in the sun.



Inside a banana plantation - the plastic bags are to protect the bunches when they are cut and loaded onto lorries. Each bunch is almost more than a strong man can carry. The plants are chopped down and recycled to mulch next year's plants which are already growing alongside the parent plants.



And this is an external view - the covers are to keep humidity in and prevent sunburned plants! So next time you fly into Tenerife, you will know what those acres of beige are all about.


In our local market we buy Grade 2 fruit - the ones deemed not good enough for export. They taste fine to us - and occasionally we get more than we bargained for - Triplets!





21 comments:

  1. My goodness! You can get three bananas in one skin? I never knew that.

    Thanks for the pics and info, Lizy. I've learned something new today.

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    1. I think they just grew too close together in the bunch.

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  2. I hadn't realised you can get more than one fruit within a skin either so I've learned something new today already. It's not the looks but the taste that is important. I know some of the veg my Dad used to grow in the garden looked very mishapen but it tasted far better fresh than stuff stored for months.
    Ann

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    1. You are so right, Ann. When I had an allotmentI grew black radishes and veg I couldn't get in the shops at all - great fun.

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  3. I'm flattered to be mentioned in dispatches! It never occurred to me that you might write about bananas today - and nor can I remember why we began joking about them.

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    1. I had to write about them - I thought I'd be in trouble if I didn't!

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  4. I bet bananas straight from the tree taste divine!

    Annalisa, writing A-Z vignettes, at Wake Up, Eat, Write, Sleep

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  5. We had a banana plant down south. It never flowered, but it used to drip exhuberantly in the rain. We had to wrap the trunk in straw and fleece in the winter (it could get down to -15C there) but it survived, and was shooting from the base. The banana is technically a herb, It can't self seed: the little black dots inside are the remnants of seeds, but they've been bred to be infertile. There's more to a banana than chocolate sauce and ice cream, you know.
    Hope this doesn't post twice - it vanished when it asked who I wanted to comment as, so I've written it again. Lorraine

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    1. Down south in France, Lorraine? We holidayed in a gite in Descartes once and there was a plant there. The plant throws out a baby shoot each year but it takes each one two years to mature. I have a book with 100 banana recipes!

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  6. Very interesting. I have an approach-avoidance conflict with bananas. We are SO far from where they are grown, I can only imagine how green they must be when they are picked to ship to my grocery store. I do love the taste, though.

    Visiting from A-to-Z today!

    siouxsiesmusings.blogspot.com

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    1. They're picked half-ripe here and chilled to reach you, which with modern banana boats doesn't take that long. You should always buy Canarian ones - the taste has been bred out of the American banana.

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  7. They're weird looking plants.

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    1. It hadn't occurred to me that they're any weirder than a lot of others - I suppose I'm used to them!

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  8. Ha! I remember walking along the banana groves and thinking about why they had the plastic bags on the bunches. Tenerife bananas were short, but very sweet. :) I miss that island.
    Happy A to Z!

    @TarkabarkaHolgy from
    Multicolored Diary - Epics from A to Z
    MopDog - 26 Ways to Die in Medieval Hungary

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    1. You must have gone on one of the guided tours?

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  9. Wow! Bananas are something that seem to always be around, and I never gave a thought to their origin past "a tree." Even though this will undoubtedly make me look like a fool, I had no idea bananas started as a flower! Great post!

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    1. Also their 'tree' isn't a tree - it's a pant. A herb in fact! And each plant dies after producung one bunch of bananas, leaing its offspring to produce the next crop.

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  10. Great photos. I'm now bananas for bananas.

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    1. They contain as much energy as a steak, according to the banana marketing board :)

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  11. Those are some lovely pictures of Bananas! I am not a fan of eating bananas, but sometimes I have a sudden craving for them.

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