An Extraordinary Inflorescence - Just for Beauty

Life in Nninzi village would only be life at all with the plant known as highland bananas. Everywhere one looks, banana groves flourish. Bananas are tall, unbranched herbs! They do not have a stem, as the apparent stem consists of overlapping leaf bases with a central fragile core or stalk. Some have short stalks up to five feet. The most significant number have medium-height stalks of ten feet. Then there are the giants with stalks reaching up to fifteen feet. In Nninzi, we use every part of the banana plant directly, except maybe the roots. But I suspect there is someone who knows some medicinal value of banana roots.  

However, we want to look at the most beautiful part of a growing banana plant - the inflorescence - the final part of the core or stalk. The dictionary gives three related definitions: the part of a plant that consists of the flower-bearing stalks, the arrangement of the flowers on the stalk, and the process of flowering blossoming. When an inflorescence emerges some twenty-one or more months after the banana sapling was planted, it faces up to the sky to declare its triumphant ascendancy. It is only accessible to see if one uses a ladder taller than the banana stalk. Figure 1 shows this situation.

Figure 1

Within two days or so, the inflorescence, in this case, the arrangement of the banana flowers, has fully emerged, wrapped in purple-colored bracts. The ensemble is titled on one side, almost parallel to the ground. However, in Figure 2, the full magnificence of the whole inflorescence has yet to be revealed.  

Figure 2

Behold Figure 3! Not only is the entire inflorescence on display, but the purple bracts, which in Figure 2 tightly adhered together, have now begun to open and separate to show what is inside.

Figure 3

Another take of similar images shows the elegant inflorescence of another type of banana in Figure 4. 

 Figure 4

Soon, the purple bracts begin to dislodge to reveal the individual flowers or florets they have been hiding. Figure 5 shows these florets on hands, which will grow into banana fingers as they mature. The white part will fall off, leaving a black mark. The green ovary will expand to make the white-yellowish flesh of the banana that we love to ripen to eat raw as fruit, roast on the fire as a snack, or cook, mash, and eat as Matooke.   

Figure 5

In Nninzi village's usual agronomic practice, the farmer chops off the remaining purple part when the edible portion of the inflorescence has all been revealed. Farmers believe that leaving the inflorescence on means the plant has to continue feeding it, thus reducing the amount of food going to the parts that will benefit the farmer more. Yet when the inflorescence falls to the ground, it becomes part of the manure to nourish the soil. Or young children collect the decapitated inflorescences and make 'cows' out of them. At any rate, all the inflorescences in Figure 6 were about to be eliminated.

Figure 6

However, there are three types of bananas, namely: the apple sweet banana (Ndiizi), the aromatic sweet banana (Bogoya), and the red-leaf banana (Kitooke ky'Empiki) where the farmer does not bother to chop off the remaining part of the inflorescence. It is a common belief that the sweet banana types taste sweeter when they retain the inflorescence. However, when the inflorescence is left intact on the bunch, it grows to a great length, as shown in Figure 7. It must surely mean that it continues to be nourished by the plant. This vindicates the farmer's action of eliminating the inflorescence as soon as the edible parts of the other types of bananas have been revealed. But, as all types of bananas become commercial, long stalks bearing inflorescences are rare in plantations.

Figure 7

                       Ndizi                                            Bogoya                            Kitooke ky'Empiki  

Indeed, what would life in Nninzi village be like without the highland banana inflorescence? That is why a famous greeting asks, Ensuku ziradde? (Are the banana plantations in peace?) Yet given the increasing number of foreign weeds colonizing plantations, pests and viruses, and soil depleted of nutrients, fewer banana farmers can offer an enthusiastic response to the salutation!          

Kitooke ky'Empiki