Where Do Bananas Come From?

Month in and month out ba­nanas can be bought in our fruit stores. But until about a hundred years ago few people outside the hot, wet lands where this fruit grows had ever tasted a banana. Bananas spoil quickly. They could not be shipped to other lands until there were fast boats to carry them and ways of keeping them cold on their journey.
Our bananas come to us mostly from Central America, the West Indies, and Hawaii. They are picked green, and are handled carefully so that they will not be bruised. After they reach the market, they are sometimes ripened with chemicals.
Bananas grow on tall plants that are of­ten called trees. They are not real trees, because they have no woody trunks. The trunk of a banana plant is a sort of tube made up of the lower parts of the plant's huge leaves. Yellowish flowers blossom at the top of a stem that grows up through the center of the tube of leaves. A bunch of bananas develops from the cluster of flow­ers. A banana plant produces only one bunch of bananas in its lifetime.
Not all bananas are like those in fruit stores. In Africa bananas grow that are two feet long and as big around as a man's arm. They have to be cooked to be good to eat.