Banana Bunch and Flower Stalk Poster

"Banana Bunch and Flower Stalk" by Catherine Sherman. A Banana bunch hangs from a plant in a garden in Kauai, Hawaii. The banana plant is the largest herbaceous flowering plant and has the scientific name of Musa. The above-ground parts of a banana plant grow from a structure usually called a "corm". Plants are normally tall and fairly sturdy, and are often mistaken for trees, but what appears to be a trunk is actually a "false stem" or pseudostem. When a banana plant is mature, the corm stops producing new leaves and begins to form a flower spike or inflorescence. After fruiting, the pseudostem dies, but offshoots will normally have developed from the base, so that the plant can be considered a perennial. The banana fruits develop from the banana heart, in a large hanging cluster, made up of tiers (called "hands"), with up to 20 fruit to a tier. The hanging cluster is known as a bunch. Musa species are native to tropical Indomalaya and Australia, and are likely to have been first domesticated in Papua New Guinea. They are grown in 135 countries, primarily for their fruit, and to a lesser extent to make fiber, banana wine and banana beer and as ornamental plants.