The plantation

When a banana plant is mature, the corm stops producing new leaves and begins to form a flower spike or inflorescence. A stem develops which grows up

inside the pseudostem, carrying the immature inflorescence until eventually it emerges at the top.[15] Each pseudostem normally produces a single inflorescence, also known as the “banana heart”. (More are sometimes produced; an exceptional plant in the Philippines produced five.[16]) After fruiting, the pseudostem dies, but offshoots will normally have developed

from the base, so that the plant as a whole is perennial. In the plantation system of cultivation, only one of the offshoots will be allowed to develop in order to maintain spacing.[17] The inflorescence contains many bracts (sometimes incorrectly

referred to as petals) between rows of flowers. The female flowers (which can develop into fruit) appear in rows further up the stem (closer to the leaves) from the rows of male flowers. The ovary is inferior, meaning that the tiny petals and other flower parts appear at the tip of the ovary.[18]