this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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Today I Learned

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Banana trees are made up of giant leaves, not a trunk. So they're more like a giant onion instead of a tree.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I just don't respect botanical definitions any more. Who cares what they think berries, fruits, grain and nuts should be? They can't even define a tree! If anyone gets to define these terms for every English speaker, it sure isn't going to be them.

Culinary definitions all the way! Unfortunately, they have no satisfying category for rhubarb either.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Aren't they also mostly genetic clones? At least the ones we eat in America are, IIRC.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Bananas grow from seeds inside the fruit. Since we bred the seeds out, now it's a clone-only plant.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And there are also small cute pink self-peeling bananas (Musa velutina)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Don't know. Last year I missed the opportunity to try it, hopefully I'll have another one this year.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (4 children)

No such thing as a tree really (genetically speaking), trees are just a bunch of plants that converged on a similar niche but they don't all share a common ancestor (some trees are more closely related to brocoli than other trees), lots of different things evolved into what we now call trees seperately from eachother so a bannana tree is as much a tree as any other tree.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

The same goes for everything that lives then. There is no such thing as a mammal, they are just a form of prototheria! A lot of them just evolved into what we consider marsupials or eutheria. But a koala is just as much a mammal as a lemur!

Now this is a much smaller branch ofc, but you could slap it onto anything more vague. Reptiles, fish, crabs... and worse... fungi. Not to mention the archea.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

So trees are the flora equivalent of crabs is what you're saying.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That doesn't mean there's no such thing as trees though. It means a tree is a growth form, a life strategy, just like a succulent, a geofyte or an epifyte. It's a group of plants that have a lot in common despite not being related, and they are well defined. And one of the important defining characteristics of a tree is true wood production, which is missing in bananas. The life form of a banana is much more similar to ginger than to any tree.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Bananas are all bite and no bark.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is unreasonably genius even for your high standard

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

And as always I enjoyed learning something new from your. Some of these classifications are nuts.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

I want to eat the ice cream bananas

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

No, they are nasty mush wax that should only be used for smells. Ugh, I hate touching them so much. The last time I bit one, I couldn't even chew it. Had to spit it right in the trash.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

No one asked.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not sure if trolling or not, but googling around and it sounds like Sensory Processing Disorders can cause this level of passionate hatred towards bananas...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Oh, definitely not trolling. I don't have many other things I have problems with, it's mostly bananas. And mushrooms. And one time I hit a lump in my mashed potatoes and threw up all over the table at a restaurant.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

I can relate to the queasiness [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Genuinely made me laugh out loud. Thank you!! 😂

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Hah, glad to help! It is pretty funny looking back on it, but my family was pretty mortified at the time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Since when is an onion a herb?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

What they mean is herbaceous, aka leafy and not woody

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I’ve gone down the rabbit hole. Depending on culinary, scientific, or horticulture, nobody agrees on what things are classified as.

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