Bananas

Photo by Fabrizio Frigeni on unsplash

Bananas are easy to peel, nutritious, and sweet, but they were originally tougher, stockier, and full of hard, black seeds. In fact, instead of the banana itself, people ate the tree’s flowers or shoots and avoided the fruit.

There are now more than 1,000 banana varieties, but the one we’re most familiar with is the Cavendish, named after English nobleman William Spencer Cavendish, the 6th Duke of Devonshire.

Though researchers have traced the domesticated banana’s origins to Papua, New Guniea, the British cultivated the variety of banana found in most grocery stores year-round.