Banana business
 It seems,
from recent reports, that the banana has taken on a new lease of life
and become one of the favourite fruits in the United Kingdom. As I recollect,
it has long been something of a joke, with arguments over whether too
curved a fruit is permissible, compared with a straighter specimen, as
an article of commerce.
Of course, ridiculing bananas goes much further back in time. I can
recollect that in my schooldays we were in the habit of singing a refrain
borrowed from the music halls that ran "Oui, nous n'avons pas de bananes:
Nous n'avons pas de bananes aujourd'hui" to demonstrate our devotion to
la belle France.
There were other strange sidelights to consider. Banana skins were part
of pantomime slapstick, and found their way into political discussions.
"Banana oil" was a synonym for nonsense in Australia. The pejorative term
"banana republic" has been applied particularly to Central American states.
In theatrical parlance a leading comedian was a "top banana" while a secondary
role was ascribed to a "second banana". To "go bananas" is to go crazy
with anger, as apes are alleged to do when given sight of their favourite
fruit. And, of course, some phallic significance has always been associated
with bananas.
Musa is a native of Malaysia and Indonesia, used as food from
earliest times. It spread to and through the Old World, and was mentioned
by Alexander the Great and by Pliny the Elder. By the 14th century it
was cultivated in Africa and the Pacific islands, and then massively in
Central America in the 19th century. Today, the humble banana, comprising
a series of many cultivars of Musa, is ranked as the fourth largest
fruit crop in the world, exceeded only by grapes, citrus fruits and apples.
In my own sheltered part of the country, Musa is to be found
in old gardens, though it does not bear edible fruit there. The plant
reaches a height of some 12m in its tropical and subtropical situations,
and bears white flowers surrounded by red bracts. The great bunches of
fruit are well known for sheltering huge spiders, which often find their
way to Europe through shipments.
In East Africa, selected banana species are used to brew beer. The flowers
are used in Asian cooking, the broad leaves being employed to wrap other
foods during cooking and preserve them afterwards. Leaves are also cut
into strips, plaited into mats and bags, and their fibre used in making
ropes and paper. The product known as Manila hemp has been widely adopted
to make what we term Manila envelopes.
Unripe banana fruits are rich in starch, and dessert fruits contain
about 18 per cent sugar when ripe. Seventeen esters are said to be present,
including isopentyl acetate and eugenol, with a number of vasopressor
amines, notably serotonin, tyramine, dopamine and noradrenaline. Few medicinal
uses of the banana seem to have been adopted. The ripe fruit was at one
time used as an anthelmintic, and the expressed juice as an antidote to
snake bite.
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