![]() ![]() We respect Carl Linnaeus too much for that. Just don’t expect to see any plantains on the list. We’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say, regardless of how you classify them, there are at least 1,000 different types of bananas commercially grown today.īut since typing out a list that long would be even crazier than typing out the whole history of the great banana debate, we’ve stuck to some of the most popular and interesting kinds of bananas below. Now, if you’re thinking to yourself that this banana beef couldn’t possibly get any more strange or confusing, we here to reassure you: It can. When coming up with his official classifications for different types of bananas, Linnaeus broke the fruit down into two types: “bananas” and “plantains.” The main designation, he argued, was how the fruits were prepared for eating, with starchier plantains requiring some cooking and bananas mostly eaten raw.īut that simple structure soon fell under its own weight, when later scientists found themselves contemplating the idea of “dessert bananas,” “cooking bananas” and “plantains,” though some plantains were also cooking bananas and some dessert bananas were really plantains. The debate has been raging in the world of curvy yellow fruits for centuries, started by the father of modern-day taxonomy himself, Carl Linnaeus. And it all depends on your definition of banana. Scientists think the species may have started in Papua New Guinea, where evidence of bananas has been found at archeological sites dating all the way back to 10,000 BC.īut the Musa couple has proved a prolific pair, and today, different types of bananas are grown in 135 countries – and are responsible for feeding billions of people a day. It seems even Earth itself can’t get enough of bananas: from Caribbean Islands to African jungles, there’s hardly an environment where the fruit seems out of place.īut it all has to start somewhere, and for bananas, that Adam and Eve is the slightly-harder-to-pronounce Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana, the two varieties of wild bananas responsible for nearly every edible cultivar we have today. So we’d understand if you already think you know everything there is to know about bananas, but there’s so much more to see about the ubiquitous fruit – if you only keep your eyes peeled. They’re one of the most iconic fruits of all time, with their flashy color and funny shape inspiring everything from catchy songs to kitschy fashions to comedy routines.Īnd even if you’ve never worn them, laughed at them, or sung their praises, we can nearly guarantee you’ve tasted one.
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