Just recently, I spotted a bronze banana (Musa laterita) bearing fruit which were turning yellow. As we all know, when bananas turn from green to yellow, it is a sign that they are ripening. On the inflorescence which was still in bloom, there was only one complete hand of fruits that was located much lower down on the stalk where the female flowers normally occur.
The only hand of banana fruits on a still flowering inflorescence.
Unlike the self-peeling banana or velvet banana (Musa velutina), the fruits of the bronze banana behave and look quite ‘normal’. Fruits of this ornamental are smooth and when they are ripe, they do not peel their skins on their own to reveal the flesh beneath. The fruits of the bronze banana are short and stout and if left unpicked, they eventually turn brown as they dry up on the plant.
The ripened fruits of the bronze banana.
I picked one of the ripe fruits, peeled the skin like a typical dessert banana and sampled the flesh beneath. It was sweet and I thought it was quite pleasant and the taste could be likened to that of a dessert banana. The only complain I have if I were to consume the entire fruit was that there were too many seeds inside the fruit. It would indeed become a chore and now I appreciate the existence of seedless fruits borne by cultivars of the dessert banana!
The numerous black seeds found inside a fruit of a bronze banana.
Each seed of the bronze banana is roundish that is flattened on one or some sides. They are dark and very hard and I wonder would my teeth break if I were to accidentally bite into one! I was trying to remove some seeds from a fresh fruit and found the process rather tedious as it was difficult to totally remove the flesh from each seed.
Seeds that were removed from a dried banana fruit.
I then thought of and tried an alternative method where I allowed some ripe fruits to dry totally on their own under direct sun. After about a week, I prised open the hard and brittel sun-dried fruit to reveal the seeds. Thankfully, it was relatively easy to take each seed out but some work still had to be done to scrape off traces of the dried remnants of flesh that was stuck rather tenaciously to the seeds.
