April 17 is National Banana Day 

While this is nominally an American “celebration”, it should international. With more than 500 stamps to mull over, it was a tough decision, but Tonga’s banana shaped stamps were the obvious choice.

Bananas
Tonga issued them April 21,1969 to June 9, 1970

The only thing you need to know about bananas are asexual and we share 50% of our DNA with bananas. Sit and ponder that for a while. 

 But, for those curious here are a few fast facts about my favourite fruit:

• Bananas are, botanically speaking, berries.
• They are members of the Musa family, which also includes plantain. 
• They are the 4th most produced crop in the world.
• Bananas are the 3rd most popular fruit in the world, following apples and then oranges.
• They come in a range of sizes and colours, from small red bananas to the yellow one’s we are most familiar with, the Cavendish. 
• There are around 1000 varieties of bananas.
• Bananas are also used to make banana paper and textiles.
• The cultivation of bananas has a bloody imperialist history. Sample Research Project | Roots of Contemporary Issues | Washington State University (wsu.edu)   and Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel
• The familiar Cavendish could be wiped out by Panama Disease thanks to the monoculture used to farm bananas. 
• A bunch of bananas is called a “hand of bananas”.
• If you have an allergy to bananas and plantains you may suffer from latex cross-reactivity. It’s not guaranteed so if you don’t have symptoms, stop worrying. This also applies to avocados, although the fruits aren’t directly related. It’s a cool connection and if you’d like to read more about this check out Allergenic Foods and their Allergens, with links to Informall | FARRP | Nebraska (unl.edu). 
• Green bananas are high in starch, which makes them great for cooking with. That starch turns into sugar when the banana ripens. This is why they taste like two different fruits. 
• Artificial banana flavouring tastes nothing like bananas. And this is a hill I’ll die on. 
• Bananas contain Potassium-40, making them slightly radioactive. 
• Bananas might be good for your mood. They contain serotonin, amino acid, and Vitamin B6, all of which can affect your mood. Not sure how many bananas you need to eat for the effect to take hold. But I’m willing to be a lab experiment if there are any labs out there studying this.