Twisty, dried brown thing at bottom of banana

What you see: A twisty bit of dried plant material at the end of your banana.
What it is: Dried petals!
Eat or toss: The banana is still perfectly edible. Eat!

Why does this banana have a dried, brown thing stuck to the bottom?

This is pretty cool isn’t it? It’s also pretty harmless. Somehow, despite the odds, the flower petals didn’t detach when this banana was harvested, shipped and set out for sale at my local store.

“That’s a remnant of the flower that usually breaks off and falls off,” said Jeff Brecht, a horticulture professor at the University of Florida. And in the off chance that the petals don’t fall off on their own, banana harvesting even includes a step where handlers are supposed to pull off any stray flower bits.

“It’s pretty unusual for it to hang on through all the handling they go through,” he said.

But this time it did hang on, lucky me! There was probably an issue with abscission, or the process by which a plant directs certain parts to fall away. Abscission occurs when trees drop their leaves in the fall, but it also comes up in plenty of other botanical processes as well. We’ve previously written about how abscission failure can lead to potatoes with attached stems (different from sprouted potatoes!) and blueberries with husks of dried flowers still clinging to them.

What do banana flowers look like, anyway?

This squiggle-bottom banana is also a great excuse to talk about exactly why a banana used to have petals on its bottom to begin with.

Here’s what bananas look like as very young fruit:

banana modified leaf raised — *Look at those cute baby bananas! Image sourced via Canva*

The green baby bananas have flowers on one end and are clustered around a large bud–they used to be inside that bud! The bud is made up of layers of modified leaves, called “bracts” that gradually lift, like the doors of a Delorean (Great Scott!), to reveal new layers of baby bananas with attached flowers underneath. Each layer is called a “hand.”

This can keep going for a long time, as you can see below. Also check out how the flowers in the next image are drying out and starting to resemble the squiggle on the bottom of the store-bought banana that inspired this post.

The first rows of baby bananas unveiled by the bracts are female, with fully developed flowers. When the bananas are nearly ripe, the bract falls off. Eventually, as bract after bract lifts, we see the innermost flowers, which are exclusively male and will not develop into fruit. However, before those male flowers emerge, commercial operations typically remove the bud. Ideally, they sell it as part of the harvest; the bud can be eaten like an artichoke.

*Bananas develop on a stalk called a peduncle. Image sourced via Canva*

You can eat banana buds and flowers!

Better Homes & Gardens shares more about preparing and enjoying banana blossoms here. Their article says, “you won’t find any fruity banana flavor here—it’s a flower, after all. Similar to jackfruit or tofu, the flavor of banana blossoms is neutral, meaning they can take on the taste of however you season them.”