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Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

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Re: Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

#4

I saw a banana tree with green bananas in Fribourg Switzerland in September 2025. According to Gemini this city is much colder than Essex, and yet.

> According to Gemini this city is much colder than Essex, and yet

And according to science Fribourg offers more growing degree days

https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/45015~56049/Comparison-of...

Re: Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

#5
post #2

> He pointed out that Musa Basjoos are not really for eating. > He said: "It's basically like having a mouth full of ball bearings with half a teaspoon of banana on them." Maybe we can iterate on the texture some more here.

Prior to human intervention, 'bananas' were small with tons of seeds.

Re: Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

#7

I saw a banana tree with green bananas in Fribourg Switzerland in September 2025. According to Gemini this city is much colder than Essex, and yet.

> According to Gemini

According to Gemini, lots of untrue things are true.

More useful to look at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/World_Ha... and see if that makes more sense, although seemingly it's changing a bit and that graphic is quite old by now (2012). A plant's survival depends on more than just its hardiness and what zone it's in of course, but it's a useful starting point.

Re: Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

#8
post #5
post #2

> He pointed out that Musa Basjoos are not really for eating. > He said: "It's basically like having a mouth full of ball bearings with half a teaspoon of banana on them." Maybe we can iterate on the texture some more here.

Prior to human intervention, 'bananas' were small with tons of seeds.

And that intervention was just an accidental discovery. Someone thousands of years ago stumbled onto a freak plant with no seeds and had the foresight to take a cutting of it. Every banana that has ever existed has been a clone of that one plant. Every so often, a new mutation occurs that gives us a new variety, but they all trace back to that one plant. It is the most extreme type of monoculture and is constantly threatened by parasites like the Panama Disease, because if one plant is vulnerable, they all are.

Re: Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

#9

I saw a banana tree with green bananas in Fribourg Switzerland in September 2025. According to Gemini this city is much colder than Essex, and yet.

> According to Gemini this city is much colder than Essex, and yet And according to science Fribourg offers more growing degree days https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/45015~56049/Comparison-of...

Huh? Fribourg is literally colder, especially in September.

Re: Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

#10
post #8
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior to human intervention, 'bananas' were small with tons of seeds.

And that intervention was just an accidental discovery. Someone thousands of years ago stumbled onto a freak plant with no seeds and had the foresight to take a cutting of it. Every banana that has ever existed has been a clone of that one plant. Every so often, a new mutation occurs that gives us a new variety, but they all trace back to that one plant. It is the most extreme type of monoculture and is constantly th…

And that intervention was just an accidental discovery. Someone thousands of years ago stumbled onto a freak plant with no seeds and had the foresight to take a cutting of it.

I don't think so. There are a ton of varieties of banana that are grown from seed. Humans have cultivated them and selectively bred them from seed for thousands of years, just like every other plant. The seedless bananas that dominate western grocery stores are 1 variety, Cavendish, that have been endlessly cloned from cuttings. They weren't the first seedless variety commercially available, they were preceded by Gros Michel. But either way, travel to southeast Asia and you'll find a lot more varieties on sale.

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