How come bananas don't have seeds?

Question

They are a false fruit. What the heck does that mean?

Answer 1

They used to have seeds, but due to selective breeding (no one wants a crunchy banana), the types of bananas you buy in stores no longer do. If humanity were to dissapear, the currently planted Banana trees of this type would be the last of their kind.

The purpose of the fruit of the plant is to deliver seeds to the soil to grow. They taste good because animals usually can't digest the seeds, so they'll eat the fruit, wander to a place farther away from the plant that it originated from, digest everything but the seeds, and defecate them out. Plants use animal feces as a fertilizer, and the seeds have a good start in life.

But if the Banana no longer has seeds, it no longer fulfills this purpose, and thus technically, it is no longer a fruit. For all intents and purposes of daily life, though, keep on calling it one.

EDIT: I've never seen black dots on my bananas, as other posters mentioned. This would be an example of a type of banana that hasn't had them bred out. They probably just don't sell them where we buy our bananas.

Answer 2

this question has been asked and answered so many times before ...

Firstly, the banana is a true fruit because it is the post-fertilization development of the ovary of the flower. We humans are lucky that the edible fruit actually develops because most plants do not set fruit if seeds are not set.

A false fruit is something that looks like a fruit but is the development of another part of the flower. Strawberry is a false fruit; the fleshy part is a development of the receptacle -- the things that look like seeds on the outside of the strawberry are the true fruits (called achenes = tiny, one-seeded fruits)

Secondly, regular eating bananas do not have seeds, they are hybrids and their genetics (triploid = 3 sets of chromosomes instead of the regular 2) causes the ovules to abort -- these aborted ovules are the small black specks mentioned by others. Wild bananas have normal genetics (diploid or tetraploid) and do set seed [see link].

Answer 3

Natural (i.e. plants that are in the wild, not cultivated for ease of growing or size/shape/color of fruit) bananas DO have seeds. The type of banana you buy at your local grocery store does not have seeds due to selective cultivation practices "breeding the seeds out of them".

A "false fruit" is a fleshy fruit (apple or pear or related fruits) having seed chambers and an outer fleshy part...so when the natural bananas (the ones WITH seeds that you don't buy at the grocery) grow, they have the seeds in the middle of the fruit and the soft flesh is the squishy stuff that surrounds them. You can eat the seeds, they're not too crunchy, but since, as humans, we're picky, we don't even care for even slightly crunchy things in softer ones. Go figure.

Answer 4

Bananas do have seeds.
You can buy seeds from many varieties here
http://www.seedman.com
I do not think that you can grow bananas from the seeds in the fruit that you buy in stores (I may be wrong). The way that they are propagated is using what are called slips. These are small shoots that grow up around a banana tree after it has flowered fruited and died. The slips are collected and replanted and grow into new trees.

Answer 5

They DO have seeds! They are just hard to see. Do this: Cut open a firm banana lengthwise. Look at that dark stripe down the center -- look really closely or get a magnifying glass. That strip of dark is actually a bunch of tiny seeds, running down the middle of the fruit! Bananas are giant seed pods.

Answer 6

Cultivated bananas are parthenocarpic (having sterile fruit), while wild bananas did at one time have seed. The plant is now reproduced from a rhizome.

Answer 7

Bananas do have seeds, but they are not viable. Bananas reproduce through assexual means. They don't need fowers and pollen.

Bananas send out rhizomes to reproduce the original plant. The rhizomes are special roots that develop new plants.

Lot's of plants do this. Take a look at strawberrys, potatos, and onions.

Answer 8

They do have seeds and it's referred to as a "false fruit," because most of the "fruit" portion comes from nonovarian tissue.

Answer 9

They do have seeds. The seeds are those little darks specks you see near the middle of the inside of the banana, running along its length.

Answer 10

some banans have black seeds inside there, but it`s steril, and not fertil. some others have no seeds, because of the giberelin hormones which ripen fruit without seed