Cultivation

The domestication of bananas took place in southeastern Asia. Many species of wild bananas still occur in New Guinea, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Recent archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence at Kuk Swamp in the Western Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea suggests that banana cultivation there goes back to at least 5000 BC, and possibly to 8000 BC. This would make the New Guinean highlands the place where bananas were first domesticated. It is likely that other species of wild bananas were later also domesticated elsewhere in southeastern Asia.

Some recent discoveries of banana phytoliths in Cameroon dating to the first millennium BC have triggered an as yet unresolved debate about the antiquity of banana cultivation in Africa. The earliest evidence of banana cultivation in Africa before this find dates to no earlier than late 6th century AD. These were possibly spread there by Arab merchants.

The banana is mentioned for the first time in written history in Buddhist texts in 600 BC. Alexander the Great discovered the taste of the banana in the valleys of India in 327 BC.The existence of an organized banana plantation could be found in China in 200 AD. In 650 AD, Islamic conquerors brought the banana to Palestine. The word banana is of West African origin, and passed into English via Spanish or Portuguese.

In 15th and 16th century, Portuguese colonists started banana plantations in the Atlantic Islands, Brazil, and western Africa. [citation needed] As late as the Victorian Era, bananas were not widely known in Europe, although they were available via merchant trade. Jules Verne references bananas with detailed descriptions so as not to confuse readers in his book Around the World in Eighty Days (1872).

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Fruit:

All about Fruits! - Botanic fruit and culinary fruit - Fruit development - Simple fruit - Aggregate fruit.

Apple:

The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family Rosaceae - The wild ancestor of Malus domestica is Malus sieversii - There are more than 7,500 known cultivars of apples - Like most perennial fruits, apples ordinarily propagate asexually by grafting - Apples are self-incompatible; they must cross-pollinate to develop fruit.