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Fascinating article. For more tree-related weirdness, I recommend doing a Google Image Search for 'banana flower' and just scrolling through the pictures. I re

• alisson 9y ago
  I used to eat banana flowers lol its not difficult to find in the market here. Its interesting because the bananas we eat don't develop seeds and the flowers are downwards and the species that does develop seeds the flower is upwards (like musa velutina) its like the common bananas are not "strong" enough, so don't even bare seeds.
  • Blahah 9y ago
    Many wild bananas have flowers that grow downwards, and have seeds (source, I've worked in two botanical gardens and lived next to one in Kenya, and have seen thousands of banana plants and grown many in my own garden). The lack of seeds in the major crop bananas is due to selective breeding for seedlessness. Usually what happens with seedlessness is some part of the seed development or maturation molecular pathways are broken by a mutation, and selective breeding is used to fix that trait in the population (source, former seed biologist). So the seedless banana plants are not generally weaker or stronger, just that they have a very specific mutation that prevents normal seeds appearing.