April 08, 2006

• I don't do anything without a decorative monkey.
• Oooh, bananananananas!
• Not to be a spoilsport here, but doesn't hybrid sterility preclude the existence of a banana seed? I mean - have you ever seen a seed, in all of the bananas you've ever eaten? The banana is a corm, the result of a natural crossbreeding experiment that gave rise to the plant as we know it. It doesn't make seeds. These could potentially be seeds from one of the banana parent plants (which are still around)... but banana seeds?
• I think some types of plantains may still have seeds, but yeah, the dessert bananas we're used to in the States don't have seeds.
• Let's ask The SeedMan.
• Oooh! Burmese Blue Bananas.
• ...grown on the Alliteration Plantation?
• I'd buy one just for the decorative monkey. The greenhouse might be handy for growing 'other stuff', too.
• You know how a banana segments lengthwise into thirds? I always thought the brownish blurry bits between the segments were the seeds. I could be mistaken, however.
• It's shown in The Dreamers film. A nice omelette is prepared there, too ; )
• Bananas do have the occasional seed--the brown bits in the middle of the bananas we eat are vestigal seeds. Real banana seeds are larger:

  Scientists at the Honduras Foundation for Agricultural Research, the world's chief center for studies of banana diseases and banana breeding techniques, have found that certain varieties of Gros Michel can be forced to produce a few seeds if their flowers are hand-pollinated with pollen from diploid, seeded bananas. From 10,000 bananas, they can expect one seedling.

• WOW /slaps self
• Let's make a song about the sucky single seedling slung out of Alliteration Plantation during vacation.
• i'll take a verse employing pup - pulp - peel - plaintain. when's vacation?
• When I was still a kid, there were sometimes wee blackish seeds, rather like carrot seeds, to be seen in the brown areas mentioned above. Haven't noticed any in decades, though. Alien tentacles have tinkered with our bananas!
• I doubt you can grow them completely on your desk, if they grow a foot in two months. At least not on my desk. But it'd still be fun to try!
• Also for your desk ... banana envelopes.
• Eh... that 'cute decorative monkey' looks like the sasquatch to me. Now I'm scared.
• I agree, Flags. I want a monkey like the one on the package/wrapper. This is false advertising! I want to have, and I demand a cute Monkey! (er...monkey)
• Ah, that slippery Shift key, eh GramMa? : )
• This Smithsonian magazine article about bananas states that in North America we used to eat a variety of banana called the "Big Mike" that had some seeds until the 1950s, when a disease wiped out that species of banana. They were then replaced with the (seedless, pollen-less, "evolutionary dead end") Cavendish, which is what we eat now. Now the Cavendish is threatened by a fungus, so we may end up with a new kind of dominant banana. (The article mentions a Phillipino banana that tastes like vanilla ice cream -- I vote for that one!)
• Interesting article.
• ))))) /obligatory bold italics
• Heavenly Days! This MUST be immortalized as one of the Top Ten taglines: MonkeyFilter: Alien tentacles have tinkered with our bananas! Flags: I don't understand it. Somebody must have greased the keyboard. Whoops!
• Eeehh... yes, GramMa. Posting with rubber gloves again, eh? MonkeyFilter: I want to have, and I demand a cute Monkey!
• As a youth, I found a seed in my banana. It turned out that my loose tooth chose that moment to come out.
• This is why I should be working on Madison Avenue: Bananvelopes