Bananas: It’s Not All Elementary

Most people know of Charles Darwin's voyage on the Beagle, and of the scientific discovery that was it's outcome.  Few people, however, know how that journey was the result of parental care and concession.  Charles's father first objected to Charles's joining the voyage, but soon gave in, even paying his son's way.  Two sentences in a letter of the father to his son on the journey caught my eye.  From England, the father reported to his son some thousands of miles to the south, "I got a Banana tree.  I sit under it and think of you in similar shade."  It might seem an unusual topic, but knowing, as I did, how Charles was not especially close to his father, I heard in those lines an expression of the father's love for his son by means of sharing news on a topic that would interest the young Charles -- Nature.

Exotic in England and the U.S. in Darwin's day, imported bananas are now common in the U.S., and are an easy means for parental care.  Being soft and sweet, a banana can be more appealing to a small child than an apple or an orange might be.

I got a kick out of seeing some banana trees when, as a child, my family moved to the South, but I was disappointed to find that its variety of fruit was not the kind we bought in stores. Grocery-store bananas, despite being now so commonplace, are nonetheless oddities of Nature.  Just to start with, a banana "tree"  is not actually a tree.  The definition of "tree" is usually a plant with a woody stem, but a banana plant's stem is instead formed out of the stems of leaves, and made strong by the pressure of water.  (A banana plant is really in a way a giant herb, being in the same group of plants that produce cardamom, ginger, and turmeric.)

A second thing that makes the matter of bananas not so elementary is that the banana fruit we eat is sterile and seedless.  The sterility is caused by cultivated banana plants having three sets of chromosomes.  That violates the normal course for sexual beings, by which a species is usually perpetuated by each parent contributing one set of chromosomes, the offspring having two sets, and thus being fertile.  Long before the word "cloning" captivated our popular imagination, banana growers had figured out how to, in a sense, "clone" new banana plants from the suckers of an old plant.

The seemingly simple banana is thus an example of the long story of humans' lives being intertwined with the lives of domesticated plants.  Although we in the U.S. encounter banana plants mostly through their fruit, in other countries, the banana plant's leaves are used in a variety of ways, from making a plate for a meal to creating shingles for a thatched hut.

That parent lovingly feeding her small child bright bananas probably has no idea that she is also introducing her child to a word that will eventually allow the child to expand its vocabulary in multiple ways.  That child, besides learning the simple, rhythmic word "banana," might in time graduate to "banana split," "banana seat," and "banana republic."  Not to mention the colorful exclamation that a person "has gone bananas!"

~~~

In what way is food you share or eat along with others a way of caring?

(The quotation from Charles Darwin's father's letter is

 dated 7 March 1833, and is No. 201 in the on-line Darwin Correspondence Project.)

Seeing More than Seashells on the Seashore

The ones I see in the natural world are rarely as beautiful as the ones I see in photographs in books.  Seashells, that is.  Almost invariably, the shells shown in books' photographs are shiny, smooth, whole, and brightly colored; whereas the shells I find on beaches are often worn, dulled, or even chipped.  Of course, that can be part of the fun in collecting shells -- the challenge of finding one that is nearly perfect.

The story of our human fascination with shells, however, has involved more than merely collecting shells. Seashells have become a part of human culture in both tangible and intangible ways. In some tropical locations, because numerous, small, almost identical shells can be found, they have been turned into such things as currency or necklace beads.  Even when fewer shells or only less spectacular ones can be found, they can still be turned into a child's art project.

Our intangible relationships with shells are less obvious, but more intriguing -- in particular, the way that shells have become vehicles for reflecting about who we are in the world.  The modern classic in this regard was Anne Morrow Lindbergh's 1955 book Gift from the Sea.  In that little, beautifully written book, Anne Lindbergh primarily used the outward shapes of different shells as metaphors for aspects of her own life.  Different shell-shapes become springboards as she reflected upon the question, "What is the shape of my life?"  Her book, reprinted in numerous editions, has been an inspiration to many, especially those who have felt the burdens and restrictions of society's not allowing equal roles for women.

However, as I look at and think about seashells, I would like to think of them as more than a physical shape that can be an analogy for some contour of my life.  I want to keep in mind that those shells have been part of the body of living creatures -- creatures who have had interests and endeavors of their own, sometimes endeavors quite different than mine.  Although I am interested in relationships between those shells on the beach and my own life, it is not so much a metaphorical relationship as it is the actual relationship between our human lives here on land and the lives of creatures in the ocean.  (In this way, I am influenced by a later generation of nature writers who have been affected by the modern environmental movement and by the science of ecology.)  A snail-like spiraling shell might be a special object of beauty to me, but to the animal who lived in it, that spiral was just a side product of the way it added to its shell as its body grew.

Therefore, as I study those shells and look at pictures of them in books, I also look at the diagrams of the strange bodies that once lived within those shells.  I do not see anything we might think of as a "normal" animal shape in the strange body, but I can recognize the diagram's words labeling parts such as "Mouth" and "Intestine." And, in some cases, even "eye."  As I read those labels, I am forced into remembering that in this shell was once a living, breathing being!  Maybe my delight in thinking about all those other beings can be for me a different kind of gift from the sea.

~~~

Have you ever picked up or gathered shells on a beach?  What made it enjoyable?

(The brief line by Lindbergh is from Chap. 2 of

Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, © 1955.

  Twenty years after its 1955 publication, Lindbergh wrote an afterword,
 looking back at the book, which can be found in many editions.)