Day ‘O

Banana Tree Stages…

We have a short, bush-like banana tree in the ocean-side yard with bananas in various degrees of ripeness.

This is the youngest stalk of bananas on the tree. You can see the cone shaped flower thing is still pretty big.

This stalk is a little more mature.

The odd looking red fleshy thing is on of many shriveling “leaf/petal” bits being shed by the cone-shaped flower at the end of the stalk pictured above. The flower “shrinks” and eventually falls off as the stalk matures.

And here is a ripe stalk – the fruit at the top becomes ripe first. We have to pick the yellow ones daily, about 4-5 every morning. They are best if allowed to ripen to the point where they just start to split their skins, but no longer (the ants are vicious!).