Banana fruit: Journey from South East Asian to North America

Portuguese sailors brought bananas to Europe from West Africa in the early fifteenth century. Portuguese called it by its Arab name of al-vaneyra. The islanders of Sao Tome called the fruit abana. Its Guinean name banema, which became banana in English, was first found in print in the seventeenth century.

The original banana has been cultivated and used since ancient times, even pre-dating the cultivation of rice. The wild ancestor of edible bananas (M. acuminata Colla and M. balbisiana Colla), except for the fe’i bananas, are centered in Malesia, a term that refers to the entire region from Thailand to New Guinea roughly the main trading are of the Malay mariners.

Bananas may initially have been introduced into Africa by Arab traders who brought the plants from Malaysia. By the fourteenth century banana had colonized the whole of Africa. An Arab traveler mentions it as existing in the south of Morocco.

The banana was carried by sailors to the Canary Islands and the West Indies, finally making it to North America with Spanish missionary Friar Tomas de Berlanga is believed to have been the first to bring bananas plants to the New World.

Friar Tomas de Berlanga set up the first New World banana plantation in 1516. Banana plantation were soon established throughout European colonies in the Caribbean as well as in South and Central America.

The yellow sweet banana, much different than its starchy cousin the plantain was discovered in 1836 in Jamaica Jean Francois Poujot, who found one of the banana trees on his plantation was bearing yellow fruit rather than green or red. Upon tasting the new discovery, he found it to be sweet in its raw state, without the need for cooking. He quickly began cultivating this sweet variety.

The sweet banana quickly made its way around the fledging colonies and onto Europe, where it was used extensively in baked goods and desserts. Soon they were being imported from the Caribbean to New Orleans, Boston, and New York, and were considered such an exotic treat, they were eaten on a plate using a knife and fork.

In the United Sates, the banana was initially regarded as a luxury fruit and a foreign one at that. Bananas began appearing in New Orleans markets during the 1830s and 1840s. Sweet bananas were all the rage at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, selling for a hefty ten cents each.
Banana fruit: Journey from South East Asian to North America