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| | Bananas is a family of herbaceous plants of bananas family, whose native is considered as South-East Asia and, particularly, Malay Archipelago. The fruits of these plants are also called as bananas, is taken is as food. At present different varieties of sterile triploid cultigens Musa × Paradisiaca (Artificial variety, not encountered in the wild environment), created on the basis of some of these plant types, widely cultivated in the tropical countries and most of them contains important role in the export. Among those which are cultivated bananas occupy fourth place in the world giving way to rice, wheat and maize to superior it. (1) The race is connecting more than 40 types, mainly distributed, in the South-east Asia and on the islands of The Pacific Ocean. The type distributed mostly in the North – Japanese plantain (Musa basjoo), generated from the Japanese islands of Ryuku islands, is cultivated or the sake of decoration planting on the bank of the Black sea in Caucasus, Crimea and Georgia.
Banana is a herbaceous plant with powerful rooting system, short, not appear above the land with the stem and 6 – 10 leaves, axilla of which forms similar stems. The height of the plant varies from 2 to 9 meters (1) and even above, which makes them one of the tallest (beside with bamboo) grass in the world (3); and not surprisingly, many people consider them by mistake as trees. The tallest plant among the banana varieties is considered to be the type Musa itinerants – height of the subspecies Musa itinerans var. gigantean may grow up to 12 m. (4) Around the base of the stem many adventitious offspring are grown one of which subsequently replaces the earlier one – in such a way the multiplication takes place. Roots are numerous and fibrous and in suitable earth goes up to 4.9 m aside and up to 1.5 m depth. (1)
The leaves are big, soft, smooth, longitudinal or oval, with a parallel venation; situated spirally. Its axilla is folded in a thick multilayered fleshy tube, which is called as pseudo stem. As far as the growth of the plant is concerned, young leaves originate from the fascicule, and the exterior ones will slowly mortify and fall off. In good weather conditions the speed of this procedure takes around one week for a leave. Ina cultivated banana leave grows up to 275 cm in length and 60 cm in width(5), they may be totally green, greenish with maroon dots or greenish on the upper side and purple in the down. During a force wind or heavy rain fall the leaves tear easily in the length wise of the vein – such an adaptation helps the plants to survive in the tropical climate. When the banana is ready for flowering, at the point of the short stem a flower stalk is formed, which penetrates through the false stem and behind the leaves gets out.
The flowering starts through 8 – 10 months after an active growth of the plant. Inflorescence – a raceme resembling an elongated magnificent sprout of violet or green contrast, on which at the base the big female one are placed, later – smaller in size androgynous, and at the end – small male flowers are placed. All the flowers are tubular, consists of 3 petals, 3 sepals, generally 6 stamen, one of which is underdeveloped and don’t have anther. The Syncarpous gynaeceum consisting of 3 carpel forms a three chambered ovary (6) (7); flowers are placed in a circle (so called “hands”) and contain in itself huge quantity of nectar (up to 0.5 g in each flower [2]). Each layer collected in a raceme, containing of 12 – 20 flowers, are situated in radial manner, and covered by fleshy, waxy on touch covering leaves. For the bananas being cultivated the flowers are white in color, the covering leaves from the outer side are violet in color, and from the inner side – they are dark-red in color. The opened male flowers generally fall off very quickly keeping the upper part of the inflorescence bare, apart from the unopened buds at the apex. For the wild-growing type, the flowering starts in the night or early morning – bats are the first ones which help the pollination for them, and in the second – birds and small mammals. |
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