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Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

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111–120 of 152 posts

Re: Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

#111
post #60
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite is the history of chili pepper. It's something so fundamental to indian cuisine that I assumed chillies were native to India for a long time. His video shows the true history of how that spice travelled from the Americas to all over the globe

Have you read Charles C. Mann's book "1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created"? It's all about the global impact of the opening of the New World by the Europeans, and how the global exchange created and is creating the "homogenocene", the age of homogeneity. There's a part about a folk song in the Philippines that lovingly goes over the crops being grown around a village. They're all introduced.

His other book, "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus"¹ is also excellent.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_A...

Re: Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

#112
post #27
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

Interestingly, apparently the Gros Michel banana (which you can still get, if you try hard enough) tastes much more like artificial banana flavor, because that was the dominant variety when the flavor was developed.

I keep on hearing this fact but I haven't tasted Gros Michel so I don't know. Fact or factoid who knows

Re: Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

#113
post #27
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

Interestingly, apparently the Gros Michel banana (which you can still get, if you try hard enough) tastes much more like artificial banana flavor, because that was the dominant variety when the flavor was developed.

It just has more isoamyl acetate, which is what artificial banana flavoring uses.

Re: Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

#114
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Naval oranges are all clones from a single mutant tree too

Similarly, all apple varieties are propagated like this.

Apple cultivars are not genetic. If you plant seeds, you're going to get some random apples, which probably aren't very good. The cultivars are all produced via cuttings.

Re: Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

#116

The UK straddles the 55th parallel North. Due to the jet streams (and formerly, trade winds) carrying warm air from the Caribbean, it has often benefitted from a milder climate than other regions at similar latitudes: Alaska, Siberia, the Baltic states. But this is wild. I am only in my 40s but I've seen the climate change significantly and it having a major impact on flora and fauna. When I was a kid, English wine w…

People/companies are already testing avocado, banana, and coffee plantations in Italy at scale. Climate change really is insane.

Re: Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

#117
post #45

Last year ours bloomed, too. The problem is that it happens to late in the year and I can’t wrap that 5m high “tree” to protect from the cold. So the bananas were the size of your pinky. Next problem, once they bloom, they die. So yes, climate change is real. For comparison, we are located in south Germany near Stuttgart and we also have a fig tree and an olive tree in our garden.

Are figs rare in central europe climates?

I live in Hungary and they seem to be relatively widespread, if not as much as in southern Europe.

Re: Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

#118
post #99
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, corn, sweet potatoes, pumpkins/zucchinis/most squashes, cassava, the common bean (including pinto, black, kidney, etc), cassava, sunflowers, avocado, etc all didn't exist in European kitchens until the 1500s (and not really widespread until at least the 1600s). Also, most of these crops were specifically domesticated in the Andes. If you go to the Andes today you can still find tradi…

Coffee is another interesting example in the other direction, it's so often associated with places like Colombia, Java, etc that people don't realize it's only native to Ethiopia, and that the majority of coffee consumed around the world today descends from one specific genetic lineage that was cultivated for a few centuries in Yemen.

[deleted]

Re: Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

#119

I have a paw paw tree that has survived 7 years in northern Wisconsin. Unfortunately it is the only one out of five that I planted that has survived and so I'll never get fruit because they reproduce sexually and as far as I know the closest one is 4 hours south in Madison.

You can order the trees online.

Re: Bananas sprout in Rayleigh Garden UK after 15 years

#120
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Lingwood site is class 5 because it's in some guy's garden and surrounded by trees/hedges that block airflow. Class 5 sites have +/- 5 degrees of uncertainty and shouldn't be used for climatology under any circumstances. As to the runway point you're being sarcastic about - yes, that can happen. The UK set a record temperature in July 2022, which the BBC reports was set at Coningsby in Lincolnshire: https://www.b…

But it's still hotter than any previous time 2 typhoon fighters landed. So unless you want to put that down to the new houses put up, it means that temperatures have gone up.

Maybe the fighter jets switched to a different kind of fuel and are now producing hotter exhaust.
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