the.com/banana
a radioactive berry that's slowly going extinct while pretending everything's fine
means A long, curved tropical fruit with soft sweet flesh and a peelable yellow skin, eaten ripe and grown in hanging bunches.
from From Spanish and Portuguese *banana*, borrowed in the 1500s from a West African language — likely Wolof or a related tongue of the Guinea coast — where it named the fruit traders carried back to Europe. The word sailed the same routes as the fruit itself, picked up by Portuguese sailors and passed along until it ripened into English.
- botany
- technically a berry; the plant is a giant herb
- radioactive
- emits potassium-40, a real unit of radiation dose
- clones
- nearly all are genetically identical Cavendish copies
- extinction risk
- a fungus is killing the global supply
- curve
- bends upward growing toward sunlight
cavendish banana — accounts for 99% of bananas exported globally, almost all bananas in western supermarkets
gros michel banana — dominant export banana until 1950s panama disease epidemic wiped out plantations in central america
lady finger banana — smaller sweet variety popular in southeast asia, particularly thailand and philippines