A single banana is called a finger, and a small cluster of them is called a hand.

The banana plant is not a tree because it does not have a woody trunk. It is actually the largest herb in the world. A single bunch of bananas can weigh between 30 and 50 kilograms. The fruit starts growing from a large purple bud called a banana heart.As the petals of the heart open, rows of flowers appear and turn into fingers. These fingers grow upward toward the sun instead of downward. This process is called negative geotropism and gives bananas their curved shape. A plant hormone called auxin controls this growth.Most bananas sold in stores are the Cavendish variety. These bananas are triploid, which means they have three sets of chromosomes. This genetic trait makes the fruit seedless. In the wild, bananas have large, hard seeds that make them difficult to eat.Farmers harvest bananas while they are still green and hard. This prevents the fruit from bruising during travel. Once they arrive at their destination, workers use ethylene gas to ripen them. This gas turns the starch in the fruit into sugar, making it sweet and yellow.