Banana Facts
This story is not necessarily a news story, in order to fill the page, we decided to bring you some interesting facts about bananas.

• Costa Rica, along  Colombia, Honduras, Panama and Guatemala, is a major banana exporter, while countries that raise bananas primarily for local use include Brazil, China, India and Thailand.

• In a green banana, there's 20 times as much starch as sugar; in a ripe banana there's 20 times as much sugar as starch.

• The banana plant, typically 15 feet tall or more, isn't really a tree: It grows from a compact underground stem called a corm. The quick-growing trunk grows to full size in about a year; it isn't wood -- it's a "pseudostem" formed from the bases of the leaves. A large flower shoot emerges at the top and, as it unfolds, it reveals tiny individual bananas, called "fingers," in double-rowed groups of 15 to 30, called "hands." The plant develops 7 to 10 hands -- a "bunch" -- of around 200 bananas.

• The trunk bears fruit only once. It is cut down or allowed to die after the bananas are harvested, and another pseudostem from that corm grows alongside it. This cycle can be repeated for many years.

• United Fruit, in 1903, was the first to ship bananas in refrigerated boats. The company became so large and powerful - and arrogant - that it was able to control the governments of several countries. Thus came the term banana republic, to describe a small country typically run by a dictator or the armed forces, whose economy is dominated by foreign companies and is dependent on one export.