Bananas are loved all around the world, but many people don’t know what banana seeds look like. Most bananas we eat today can’t make seeds and can’t have babies. But if you look at a wild banana, you’ll find the seeds are there, hiding inside.
Let’s take a closer look at banana seeds. It’s like cutting open a mystery to see the secrets inside the banana.
Table of Contents
Where Banana Seeds Come From
The bananas we eat are made from two wild types of bananas: Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. When these two got together, they made bananas that don’t have seeds.
The old wild bananas used to have real seeds. You can learn a lot about banana seeds by checking these wild kinds out. When the banana plant dies, the seeds are meant to spread around.
What’s Inside a Banana Fruit
A banana has a soft inside part, which is the pulp, and it’s covered by a tough skin or peel. The inside has spaces called locules, and they hold both the pulp and the seeds.
When bananas change from green to yellow, the starch inside changes into sugar. That’s why the banana goes from hard and green to soft and sweet. If the banana flower gets pollen, seeds can start to grow in the pulp.
Young Banana Seeds and What They Look Like
Young banana seeds are hard and black, shaped like little ovals. They are lodged in the locules, and they can be between 5-10 mm long. The seeds have a tough coat around them that keeps the tiny baby plant, the embryo, safe inside.
In bananas that aren’t ripe yet, these tiny seeds look like big spots in the hard, starchy middle. But when the banana gets ripe, you can see these seeds more clearly against the soft, sweet pulp.
What Fully Grown Banana Seeds Look Like
When they’re all grown up, banana seeds are shaped a bit like a tiny bean, with three sides. Their coat can be brown or black and feels rough and grainy. If the seeds are dried, the coat looks wrinkly.
Inside the seed, there’s a small embryo. This is the part that would grow into a new plant if the seed is put in the soil. The embryo has two special leaves that hold food for the baby plant. The embryo, the food part called endosperm, and the seed coat are all parts of the banana seed.
Where to Find Banana Seeds
In wild bananas with seeds, you’ll find many rows of seeds stuck in each locule. Some kinds of bananas can have more than 200 seeds in just one space. These seeds run along the whole banana, surrounded by the yummy pulp. When the banana is ripe, the seeds come out easily from the pulp.
Why Today’s Bananas Don’t Have Seeds
People changed bananas on purpose over many years, going from bananas with seeds to ones without. Bananas without seeds are made with three sets of chromosomes, which stops them from making normal seeds.
Having no seeds gives us more banana to eat all the way through. Plus, it makes the fruit bigger, yummier, and you get more bananas from the plants.
Can Bananas Grow from Seeds?
Yes, you can grow bananas from the seeds of wild bananas or certain special kinds. But the new banana plants will be different from the mother plant.
To grow bananas from seeds, take out the seeds carefully, clean them up, and then plant them. The seeds might take 2-8 weeks to start growing. After that, the little plants, called plantlets, can be moved outdoors.
What’s the Use of Banana Seeds?
Banana seeds were important for wild bananas to make new plants. Animals would eat the ripe bananas and then the seeds would go through their system without breaking. When the animals went to the bathroom, the seeds would come out and could grow into new banana plants wherever they fell. But humans changed bananas so we don’t really use the seeds anymore.
Wrapping It Up
If you could peek at a wild banana’s inside, you would see the dark seeds standing out against the light, sugary fruit. In the wild, the banana used these seeds to make more banana plants before humans changed things. Now, although the bananas we eat don’t have seeds, understanding how seeds work helps us see how bananas used to live and grow.
Digging into the details of banana seed anatomy lets us discover the story behind this fruit that so many people enjoy.
