Freak Banana With Long Fruit Bunch (Trunk)

Photo of a freak banana with trunk. Or rather, a very long bunch. No exact measurement was given by the original photographer.


Photo by: by Thong Weng Kwong, TheStar

Related posts:
* Freak papaya from Borneo

Freak papaya from Borneo

This my second series on nature's freak. The first one was about a Branched coconut tree. Below is a photo of a freak papaya which bear 3 papaya fruits on a single stem. A triplet papaya.


Above: While branched papaya tree is common, branched papaya fruit is rare.


How a normal papaya tree look like.

The papaya (from Carib via Spanish), is the fruit of the plant Carica papaya, in the genus Carica. It is native to the tropics of the Americas, and was cultivated in Mexico several centuries before the emergence of the Mesoamerican classic cultures. It is sometimes called a "big melon" or a "paw paw" but the North American pawpaw is a different species, in the genus Asimina.

Location of photo subject: My house backyard at Kuching.

nature's freak

Branched coconut tree

I have seen hundreds of coconut trees (if not thousand) with one straight stem up to the nuts cache (fruit brunches) and foliage burst until recently.

The coconut (Cocos nucifera) is a branchless trunk and branched coconut tree is very rare. It is not a freak of nature that the tree branched out and branching may occur due to injury caused by insect pests.

At a private land in Kuching, Sarawak, one coconut tree produced a branch as depicted below:



More photos on branched coconut tree.

Further readings:
* Coconut freaks, Roland Bourdeix of France.
* A forked coconut tree at Fort Sindhudurg, India.

nature's freak