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Bananas grow in large, pendulous bunches in "hands" of
around fifteen "fingers" each. Each banana is curved,
largely because its early development was inside a curved
bract on the flower structure.
Some supermarket chains reject bananas that are "too
bent", resulting in wastage of otherwise
perfect fruit.
No more! UBCo's Banana Unbender consists of a solar-
powered (Bananas grow in sunny areas, after all) motor
from which the cut bunch is suspended for a few days,
after it is cut from the tree.
A weight is attached to each banana and the motor
started, spinning gently enough to prevent damage but
quickly enough to gradually pull the bend out of each
banana, making them straight and therefore more
acceptable to wholesale buyers.
Come, Mr Tallyman, tally me banana!
Pond_20Skater_20exoskeleton
Meanwhile, back in the Entomology Lab [spidermother, Apr 17 2012]
[link]
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Beautiful women eat bananas? |
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I don't dare look at that link while I'm in this office.
Sorry. |
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I expect that bananas with a reverse bend would be a winner. |
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They would be "backnanas", I should imagine? |
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The same concept has been applied to another thing, for which banana is a common euphamism. I'll let yall figure that one out on google. |
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Gee thanks. You're all heart and class, aren't you? |
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I'm not sure that was to iron out kinks... rather, to
enhance them? |
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Telescopic bananas would also lower shipping costs. |
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Microscopic bananas would confer the same benefit. |
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Otherwise known as seeds. |
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Which they have within their flesh, though few know
it. |
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flesh bananas...now you're talking! |
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You seem to be the one who suggested them,
[xandram]. |
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Well, that's where the seeds are. |
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Most commercial bananas don't have seeds - cavendish and lady finger, for example, are sterile cultivars, like sultana grapes. Actual banana seeds are pretty hard to miss. They are the size of a small pea, shiny black, and hard enough to hurt your tooth. They're conveniently located near the base of the banana, though, so they aren't really a big problem. |
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(Source: My own experience. I found a wild banana patch in Thailand. The bananas were small, but delicious, and had seeds as described.) |
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You'll also often find very small, non-viable, seeds in
many commercial bananas. They're little black
numbers, about the size of a poppyseed. |
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Fair point; to me, though, "seed", unqualified, means a proper, viable seed. Otherwise greengrocers would have to advertise "Very small, non-viable seeded watermelon's". |
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True. Though I shudder to think how that would end
up being written in Greengrocerese, or whatever
that weird language of theirs, with the odd
punctuation, is called. |
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I have seen one of the larger seeds you mention,
about buckshot-sized, in a red banana that was
growing in our garden. |
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Has this anything to do with Queenslanders being nicknamed "Banana-Benders"? |
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Yep. we're the ones who put the bends in them in
the first place. You sure you wanna know how? |
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There's actually a variety of banana, developed in
the 1970s, called "Golden Shot", which has no (or
very little) curvature. It was marketed with the
slogans "Straight from A to Banana" and "Give it to
me straight". |
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It was not a hit with consumers, but did for a while
enjoy success with producers of banana-derived
products such as banana chutney and banana jerky. |
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Can't believe you went there, [Max]. |
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Crossing that fine line between just bad taste, and
ultimate tasteless tastelessness. |
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It's better than what's going on over in the Entomology Lab. |
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//Entomology Lab// Link provided that the Children of Tomorrow may understand. |
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