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Banana (Musa acuminata)
Photo: Miya.m, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

On the map in 9 countries crop

Banana

Musa acuminata

Family: Musaceae

On our map this plant appears in 9 countries and ranks highest in: Burundi, Ecuador, Uganda, St. Lucia, Honduras, Somalia and others.

The banana is a large perennial reaching 3–6 m, with a “trunk” formed from rolled leaf sheaths and huge leaves that tear easily. In East Africa mainly local highland varieties are grown, yielding starchy cooking bananas as well as fruit intended for making drinks. Bananas grow in dense clumps around homes, and their leaves are used for thatching, wrapping food and as mulch. Fermented banana juice mixed with sorghum flour makes urwarwa – the traditional banana beer.

Description from: Burundi.

More: Wikipedia (en) Wikipedia (pl) Plants of the World Online (Kew)

Significance in each country

  1. Burundi no. 2 of 5 cultivated

    Bananas are one of Burundi’s staple food crops and are grown by the vast majority of households.

  2. Ecuador no. 2 of 10 introduced or naturalised

    Since the mid-20th century bananas have been one of the pillars of Ecuador’s economy, and the city of Machala in El Oro province calls itself the “banana capital of the world”.

  3. Uganda no. 2 of 5 cultivated

    Uganda is one of the world’s largest producers and consumers of bananas, and in Luganda the word “matooke” also means a meal; banana groves surround almost every homestead in Buganda and Ankole.

  4. St. Lucia no. 3 of 5

    From the 1950s bananas exported to Britain were the island’s main source of income; boiled green bananas (“green fig”) with salt fish are today Saint Lucia’s national dish.

  5. Honduras no. 4 of 5 cultivated

    From the late 19th century American fruit companies set up vast plantations on Honduras’s Caribbean lowlands and built ports and railways, wielding influence over the country’s politics.

  6. Somalia no. 4 of 5 cultivated

    Plantations set up by the Italians in the Shabelle Valley near Afgooye and Marka made bananas Somalia’s second-largest export after livestock; the civil war ruined the industry, but bananas are still an important crop here.

  7. Costa Rica no. 6 of 10 cultivated

    Banana plantations began to be established in the 1870s along Minor Keith’s railway, then being built to the port of Limón, which gave rise to the United Fruit Company.

  8. Guatemala no. 8 of 8 cultivated

    In the first half of the 20th century the American United Fruit Company controlled plantations, railways and ports in Guatemala, and President Árbenz’s land reform, which took over its uncultivated land, preceded his CIA-backed overthrow…

  9. Colombia no. 11 of 15 cultivated

    Colombia is one of the world’s leading banana exporters. Their history also has a dark side – in 1928 in Ciénaga, the army shot striking workers from the United Fruit Company plantations, an event Gabriel García Márquez described in “One…