Commercially grown banana are unripened , hulking , 8 - inch - plus behemoth with nary a spot on their smooth , firm pelt .
Homegrown bananas — at least in my home — are half that size , and so cunning and plushy that you want to prod a finger into their freckle skin like the Pillsbury Doughboy .
While some sources say that banana tree lose texture and nip as they ’re left to mature on trees , I do n’t always agree . After eating many a store - bought banana that has ripened off the industrial plant , that first tree - ripened ( or more accurately , stalk - ripened ) banana tree from my backyard tastes like a creamy marshmallow . ( Thoughbananas do once in a while break openwhen they’retooripe , so I try not to rent them get to that point . )
In fact , my best-loved campfire dessert is a banana tree , break up in one-half and stuffed with mini marshmallows , deep brown chips , and peanut butter , then wrapped in foil and roasted over a fire . Talk about creamy .
But I depart . It did n’t seem so long ago that I was looking at a bloom of beautiful banana tree blossom . Banana Berry ( recall thatnifty titbit ? ) shortly appeared , and seemingly overnight an entire bunch had ripen and I could n’t eat all the bananas fast enough .
Long before settlers in the Americas ever tasted a banana tree in the 16th 100 , the fruit was civilize throughout Southeast Asia , the Middle East , and Africa . But the banana tree of the clock time was far from the perfect Chiquita banana tree we see today .
The other banana tree was lowly and small-scale , about the size of a human race ’s finger . It is believed that Arab striver traders , who also traded ivory and bananas , coined the cropbanan , the Arabic word of honor for finger . So , it create sense that an individual banana is refer to as a “ digit ” on a “ hired man ” of bananas .
But long , long before those Fannie Farmer and bargainer ever hawked bananas , the Greek philosopher and botanist Theophrastus ( a student of Aristotle ) recounted a folk legend of three saucy men who sat under the shade of a banana tree Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and eat its fruit . This myth led to the now - obsolete botanical name of the banana , Musa sapientium , which transform into “ banana of the salvia . ”
This wisdom carried over into other cultures , too . According to Hindu legend , the banana tree was the proscribed yield from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden . After the Fall of Man , Adam and Eve cover their naked bodies with banana leaves rather than skimpy Libyan Islamic Group leaves ( as we have intercourse them ) . To this day , a banana tree is often bear on to as a fig ( or figue ) in the West Indies .
Carl Linnaeus , the father of Linnaean taxonomy , classify one course of the banana asMusa paradisiaca , an archaic scientific name that translates into “ banana of paradise . ” Early European name derive from the Middle Ages include orchard apple tree of paradise , fig of Eve , and fig of Adam , as well as the Frenchfig du paradis(fig of paradise ) .
But as they say … a banana tree by any other name would taste as angelic .
