A few hundred years ago, bananas weren’t the same they are today. They weren’t as sweet, and they weren’t yellow, but green or red instead.
The yellow banana is in fact a mutation discovered in 1836 on the Jamaican plantation of Jean Francois Poujot. From here, yellow bananas quickly made their way to North America and they have become a delicatessen eaten as a dessert.
As opposed to other kinds of fruit, bananas have a very special feature: they don’t grow in trees. The banana plant is not a tree but a giant plant related to lilacs and orchids, even though its 6-7 m tall stalk is often confounded with a tree trunk.
Bananas are picked and transported when still yellow. They are the only fruit in the world that will have a better flavor and texture if picked early. Bananas ripen extremely fast due to the seeds, which release a mixture of ethylene and carbon dioxide that speed up ripening.
Watch the video below to see how bananas are picked and transported.