XI 
BANANAS HAVE NO SEEDS 
I SN’T IT ODD that bananas contain no seeds that will 
grow when they are planted! 
The object of a plant in producing fruit is nearly al¬ 
ways that of putting a seed inside it. The fruit will 
help the seed to get planted. Berries make a fruit that 
birds like. The birds carry the berries away and drop 
the seeds in a new place. The walnut tree grows a nut 
which squirrels like and will bury in the ground to eat 
later on. The forgotten nuts produce new trees. 
But the banana plant, which produces one of the hand¬ 
somest fruits in the world, cannot grow another plant 
from that fruit. So for a long time it was a mystery why 
it went to the trouble to produce a fruit. 
The banana plant does not grow from seed. Sugar cane 
grows from joints that are planted. Potato plants grow 
from eyes on the potatoes that are cut up and put in the 
ground. Banana plants grow from large bulbs, or heads, 
under the ground. The heads also push up, about the 
trunks, small shoots, or suckers. These suckers grow 
to be new trees. By the time the original plant is grown 
the head under the ground will have developed and 
started half a dozen others. 
The grown plant is cut down when its bunch of bananas 
has been harvested. The young plants will be thinned 
out to three or four, and these will be allowed to grow. 
Sometimes they are transplanted. New ones spring up 
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