We were in the Tanzanian village of Mto Wa Btu, trying to find a new bird or two to add to our list. Our guide, Fred, stopped alongside a small planting of perhaps an eighth of an acre. “These are banana trees,” he declared in his wonderfully accented English (Fred speaks four languages). We were amazed as he described the biology of this plant with the fruit known worldwide. None of us had any idea that bananas grow as they do.

Bananas are the world’s most popular fruit, with over 100 billion consumed annually. That is an average of 13 bananas a year for every human on the planet. Most of us eat far more than that. It ranks as the fourth most vital staple food worldwide. The world’s biggest producers of bananas are India, China, Brazil, Ecuador and the Philippines. Although India is the

See Full Page