Chapter 1
Botany and berry weird science
Chapter 2
The banana wars and geopolitical slip-ups
Chapter 3
The great extinction and the Cavendish clone
Chapter 4
Global banana culture and surprising uses
YOUR GOAL
Master of The secret life and global drama of the banana
Ch 1 · Botany and berry weird science
artiteacher Banana Berry Botany
That yellow banana, is a real true berry, strawberry's a fraud!
artiteacher Wild bananas are filled with hard seeds, but a triploidy mutation leaves commercial crops sterile, requiring manual planting
artiteacher A colorful botanical chart illustrates the internal seed structure of a sliced banana.
Fun Fact
Radioactive fruit: Eating one banana exposes you to about 0.1 microsieverts of radiation, meaning you would need to eat ten million bananas at once to get radiation sickness.
Glossary
berry (noun)
A simple, fleshy fruit that has multiple seeds and develops from a single ovary. Because they develop from a single ovary, bananas are botanically classified as true berries, unlike strawberries.
A simple, fleshy fruit that has multiple seeds and develops from a single ovary. Because they develop from a single ovary, bananas are botanically classified as true berries, unlike strawberries.