That’s right! Bananas do not grow on trees. The banana plant is actually an herb and is considered by some to be the world’s largest herb. Flowering plants are split up into two basic groups: monocots and dicots. Dicots include plants such as oak trees, roses, apple trees and orange trees. Monocots include plants like corn, wheat, orchids, lilies and of course bananas. (These lists are by no means comprehensive lists of all the monocots and dicots in the world. Both groups are extremely large and diverse.) All of the monocots listed do not produce true wood, whereas all of the dicots listed do. The botanical definition of a tree states that the plant must have wood to even be considered a tree. Wood is produced during secondary growth (aka secondary thickening). Bananas do not have any secondary growth, which means they don’t have any wood. Since bananas do not produce wood, they are not trees. All this talk about wood raises a question, however. Palm trees are also monocots. They may look woody, but produce their stems’ thickness via a process called primary thickening. So the question now is: Are palm trees really trees? And if they aren’t, does the palm tree trump the banana as the largest herb in the world?
