How about some respect for bananas?

· History / Historia
Authors

bananos.jpgThere are dozens of different types of bananas around the world, but practically every banana consumed in the western world today, is descended directly from a single plant grown in a hothouse on a Derbyshire estate in the UK, 180 years ago.

Bananas are the fourth most important crop after wheat, rice and corn. Around the world, more than 100 billion bananas are consumed each year and in many countries, they are a vital food source and big business.

© J. Russell – February 20, 2016
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Bananas plants reproduce asexually by shooting suckers from a subterranean stem. The shoots have a vigorous growth and can produce a ready-for-harvest bunch in less than one year.

Since 1830, Cavendish bananas have been grown at Chatsworth House on the family estate of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, from a specimen acquired from Mauritius by their head gardener Joseph Paxton, who was always on the lookout for exotic plants.

To grow the plant, Paxton filled a pit with “plenty of water, rich loam soil and well-rotted dung”, maintained the temperature between 18C and 30C (65F – 85F) and named the fruit Musa Cavendishii after his employers, who´s family name was Cavendish.

It wasn’t until November 1835, that Paxton’s banana plant finally flowered and by May 1836 it bore more than 100 bananas. One of the bananas won a medal at that year’s Horticultural Society show and at the time, it was a big deal in England to be able to grow your own bananas and feed them to your guests..

A few years later the duke supplied two cases of plants to a missionary named John Williams who took them to Samoa, however only one case survived the journey but this launched the banana industry in Samoa and other South Sea islands. Other missionaries spread the Cavendish banana across the Pacific and on to the Canary Islands.

It’s only in recent years that the Cavendish has become the banana of choice as the previous popular type of banana called the Gros Michel was almost completely wiped out in the 1950s by a fungus known as Panama disease or banana wilt.

Consequently, banana growers turned to the Cavendish breed as it turned out to be immune to the deadly fungus. Tho smaller and less tasty, it was able to grow in infected soils, and traveled well when exported.

Today, the vast majority of bananas exported to Europe, the UK and North America are Cavendish and all are clones of the first plant cultivated at Chatsworth House. A quarter of all bananas eaten in India are Cavendish and just about all the bananas sold and consumed in China are descended from the plant at Chatsworth.

55 million tonnes of Cavendish bananas are grown each year,

47% of all bananas grown worldwide are Cavendish

5 billion bananas are eaten in the UK each year

Ecuador is the largest exporter in the world of bananas

More info on banana production

So . . . Like so many of the great things in life, you can also thank the British for having the foresight to breed a decent banana for you to enjoy at breakfast, lunch or dinner. Can’t say the same for kippers.

9 Comments

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  1. eltalparroquia

    “The Cultural Cringe is an internalized inferiority complex which causes people in a country to dismiss their own culture as inferior to the cultures of other countries. A person with a cultural cringe will tend to discount a lot of their own culture, and embrace another country’s ‘better’ culture instead. In fact, it’s common for people suffering from Cultural Cringe to disavow that there is a national culture at all. Cross-reference How to recognize that you’re an American and the various spin-off lists for other countries.
    The Trope Namer and Trope Codifier is Australian literary critic and social commentator A. A. Phillips, who coined the term in his 1950 essay “A.A. Phillips on The Cultural Cringe,” where he observed this behavior—specifically Australian feelings of inferiority towards Britain—in rampant abundance among his contemporary fellow Australians. (This is also why it’s a part of Australia’s Useful Notes, along with Tall Poppy Syndrome.) This trope is at least Older Than Radio, though, enough so that among the people Gilbert and Sullivan felt “would not be missed” was:
    “The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone / All centuries but this, and every country but his own.”. El uso del anglicismo en su respuesta no es correcto; porque en mi proposicion se presentaba un hecho sobre la pirateria de los hijos de la Rubia Albion. Algo completamente diferente al significado del “inglesazo”. Claro que hay terminos en el castellano para lo que usted equivocadamente insinuo. Que Ud. los ignore, es diferente. “Pedid y se os dara” dijo EL que dijo. Siga con su trabajo; es interesante leerlo; aun con sus equivocaciones.

    PD: Busque la definicion de “malinchismo”.

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  2. Leonardo Ricardo

    Thanks..I didn’t know.

    I get to know many things around here.

    Good (sometimes I can avoid slipping on banana peels/other)

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  3. eltalparroquia

    Thank to England for the bananas? They robbed Belice; is it not sufficient as payment?

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      • eltalparroquia

        Congratulaciones por su trabajo investigativo. Como informacion, porque la veracidad de varias proposiciones en el, es dudosa. Verbigracia: el uso de la expresion inglesa. Si su lexico en la lengua de Cervantes es mesquino; basta con preguntar. Si fue usado con el intento de ofender; en eso se quedo: intento. Soy inmune a los golpes bajos.

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      • By: John Russell

        La verdad eltalparroquia,

        Son conceptos sofisticados y profundos y la lengua de Cervantes no está a la altura.

        Saludos
        JR

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  4. Kris Weston

    we are a meddlesome bunch arent we. i never knew this! im off to make a banana smoothie.

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