Nicolas Naranja

I happened upon this newspiece out of the Caymans

Cayman 27 : The Freaky Fruit Files: Massive Plantain


That plantain will make quite a few tostones

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Some people go bananas, I went plantains.

Gabe15

The variety is 'Hua Moa', or formally 'Popo'ulu Hua Moa'. They can get quite large, but those are rather exceptional compared to the typical ones you see. It's possible there are just really good conditions, or as the reporter actually suggested, sometimes there are mutations which cause multiple ovaries to fuse together and create fruits which are exceptionally large.

Below are photos of a 'Muraru Mshale' "fruit" which is actually 2 fruits fused together. You can see because of the double placenta in the cross section, and also there were two sets of flower parts on the end. The fruit was almost 2X larger than any of the others from the bunch, mainly in girth.

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

The Hollyberry Lady

Nicolas Naranja

I've come across double fruit, but it usually isn't more than two fingers per bunch. On another note, there must not be much news in the caymans if a large plantain makes the news. Much better than crimes.

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Some people go bananas, I went plantains.

Gabe15

Typically it is only a couple fingers per bunch if at all, but just about any reasonable mutation you can think of has happened to some banana cultivar somewhere, and could happen again.

For example, here is the East African Highland Banana (AAA, Mutika/Lujugira) cultivar 'Nante'. Almost all of it's fingers are fused, even more so than 'Praying Hands' in which you can still see the separate ovaries. In this cutlivar, an a whole cluster of ovaries may seem to be a single fruit.

Women farmers sometimes plant this cultivar for good luck in hopes of giving birth to twins.

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

Nicolas Naranja

That's interesting, I wonder if banana breeding will ever come to the point where you could produce a cultivar that was all fused fruit like a double plantain where all the fruits were 2 fused plantains.

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Some people go bananas, I went plantains.

Nicolas Naranja

I had a really big Hua Moa fruit today

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Some people go bananas, I went plantains.

Nicolas Naranja

I made maduros out of that big fruit last night

Cut


Fry


Sprinkle with confectionery sugar.

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Some people go bananas, I went plantains.

Bananaman88

Excellent!