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] 132 points 1 week ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Blueberry just chilling there in the corner the whole time, secure in their berry-ness

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

One of the few that people accidentally named accurately.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Are we just gonna forget about avocado too?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Are all eggplants?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

want some can'tberry juice now

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

they wouldnt accept it quite so easily. their pride would make them devolve into berry cultists, never accepting the truth.

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

Make berries berries again

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 week ago (4 children)

They are fast-growing plants, with a growth rate of up to 1.6 metres (5.2 ft) per day.[5]

holy shit

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I feel like they'd feel pretty warm to the touch if they are growing that fast.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I kinda feel like heat would be wasted energy that could be used to grow

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I feel like bananas would be cold as hell if they were growing that fast.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Absorbing heat from hapless critters that happen to brush a banana leaf to g r o w

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

Fun fact! The farmers rely on this effect to supply supplemental meat in the growing season.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Well, they do feel warm to the touch, but bananas only grow in warm and humid climates, so everything feels that way.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

So I’ve searched and searched and my wife and I watched a lot of YouTube timelapses and we couldn’t find one that grew that fast. Not saying it isn’t the max, but it’s probably very abnormal

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Anecdotal, but I've seen banana plants push out leaves vertically nearly that fast at their peak growth. Each leaf can be close to 6ft long, maybe longer. They shoot straight up out of the top of the plant when they come out, so they do temporarily add that much height.

When the leave gets completely pushed out, it unfolds and leans to the side and in the end only adds a foot or less to the full height.

Not sure if that counts, but they are fun plants to have. I'm in Midwest America... so you don't have to be in a tropical area to grow them, but we do have to cut it down every year and cover it in mulch and leaves to protect it.

Our biggest gets to 16-18ft tall every year. One of it's children we've given away is a bit bigger.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Fun fact: banana tree trunks grow horizontally underground. The above ground part is a leaf bunch that produces exactly one bunch in their lifetime. Which is why farmers cut it down after harvesting, to stimulate the tree to produce new shoots and more nanners.

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

Now check bamboo

[–] [email protected] 41 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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Exactly? Sorry, nerds ruined this one.

You know what a fruit and a vegetable are. It has nothing to do where the seeds are. Botanists don't get to change the English language.

Like everything else in English, you'll figure it out from context.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Vegetables don't exist botanically and fruit has a very different meaning in a botanical context when compared to the culinary definition

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Intelligence is knowing tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Salsa is a tomato based fruit salad. (I don't take credit for this, I read it somewhere)

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

We're not talking about whether something is a fruit or a vegetable lmao

This is about what kind of fruit something is, e.g. a berry vs a drupe

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 week ago (1 children)

i chopped down a banana tree once, definitely not wood, was like cutting a large celery

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

Baby don't cut me

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

See /c/trees

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[–] [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] 11 points 1 week ago

I'm going to need a banana for scale.

[–] [email protected] 10 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] 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 (2 children)

Bananas are all bite and no bark.

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

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 7 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] 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] 7 points 1 week ago (3 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.

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

No one asked.

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

I want to eat the ice cream bananas

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

Since when is an onion a herb?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

What they mean is herbaceous, aka leafy and not woody

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