What?! Are Sunday Snapshots back?! I hope so, my friend, I hope so!
Banana blossoms are considered to be exotic in the US. They shouldn't be as the banana plant is one of the oldest plants known to man and the banana fruit one of the most common fruits. The banana plant makes pretensions to be a tree when, in fact, it is the largest flowering herbaceous plant. If you haven't seen a banana blossom before, then these Sunday Snapshots might interest you.
Purple red blossom
Always intriguing
Peel away the reddish-purple bracts to reveal the flowers
Each flower becomes that ever-so-familiar banana
The bracts and flowers become paler the closer to the inside they are.
Male flower, with a prominent stamen
Tender heart of the banana blossom
Apart from the darker tough outer bracts, almost all of the blossom is edible. I'll have a recipe coming up later this week.
Banana plants by the roadside in Viet Nam
Young green bananas emerging from the banana blossom
Green bananas growing from a banana blossom
Banana plants became a common sight as we started descending to a lower elevation through the Central Highlands of Viet Nam. These pictures aren't the greatest because it was very windy but they show you how bananas emerge from a banana blossom.
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