Are Banana Trees, Trees?

Are Banana Trees, Trees?

You may have heard a plant in someone’s yard that either grew or could grow bananas referred to as a tree, as in “Banana Tree”.  This raises a question though, because banana plants don’t look like typical trees.  It may have made you wonder, are banana trees, trees?

The Short Answer

The short answer to this is no, banana plants aren’t trees.  Instead, they are herbs.  We might think of them as trees because of their size, but they are very different.

A Little More Explanation

A lot of things make a tree, a tree.  One of these is that trees have a stem that’s made of wood.  This makes sense.  Think of the trunk of an ash tree, a birch tree, a walnut tree, or any other, and you know, in a sense, what they’re made of.  Their stems are wood.

Bananas don’t have wooden stems.  Their stems are succulent instead.  They have what is called a pseudostem.  A banana plant has a number of sheaths of leaves that overlap.  These overlapping sheaths are what make up the stem.  The stem contains a large amount of water, and its structure is very different from the structure of a tree stem.

Additionally, although banana plants have roots, what they have underground is different from trees.  For example, bananas have something called a corm.  Corms are a special kind of stem that’s underground.  Nutrients are stored in banana corms that are used for growth in spring.

What About Herbs?

We said above that bananas are herbs.  In fact, they are perennial herbs and are relatives of ginger.  There are different ways to define herbs, but one way is to define them as plants that have seeds, a stem that isn’t made of wood, and that die back during winter.  This describes banana plants.  Herbs can be perennials like bananas, but can also be annuals and biennials.

Sometimes we use words for things that are actually different from what they are, like when we call tomatoes a vegetable or almonds, nuts.  The same idea applies here.  We call banana plants trees because they grow very large and produce a fruit and can sometimes seem like trees in a landscape.  Even though they aren’t really trees, we sometimes think of them as though they are.

If you liked learning about bananas, check out our other posts on our TrueTreeTalk blog.  Follow us on Facebook to keep up with these and other posts.

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