It’s easy to dismiss the banana as a mere mundanity. Bunches sit in various stages of ripeness at most grocery stores and gas stations, hardly at risk of ever selling out. Plantains—which, despite the name, are in fact members of the banana family—form a core flavor profile in the tropical cuisines found throughout Houston. Many a classic pratfall performance involves the peel’s slippery properties.
Yet the banana is hardly as humble a fruit (or, botanically speaking, both a fruit and an herb) as it initially appears. In fact, there's a dark side to the familiar yellow potassium bomb, whose contemporary ubiquity stems (pun intended) from a combination of colonialism and exploitative corporate and political machinations.
Houston Botanic Garden’s second annual Go Bananas! festival, happening from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. this Saturday, June 3, aims to celebrate the beloved foodstuff while simultaneously teaching attendees that their favorite wholesome snack has a not-so-wholesome history.
“There have been governmental coups over bananas,” says Dany Millikin, Director of Education at HBG. This includes the 1954 deposition of democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, blessed and backed by the CIA; the intelligence organization sought to preserve the business investments of United Fruit Company amid incoming labor reforms.
Millikin explains, “There’s a horticulture story, there’s a colonial story, there’s a cultural story. It’s also the only colonial-type thing—you think tobacco, sugarcane, bamboo, these very problematic plants—that when people grow it, they keep it in the place where it was grown. Indigenous folks will keep it, or people forced to settle in a village will keep it because it’s such a great starchy food.”
Programming at Go Bananas! includes a lecture on this sociopolitical context of bananas by Elise Rodriguez of Mercer Botanic Gardens in Humble. HBGs’ own Brent Moon will also speak on the flourishing diversity within the Musa genus, and house entomologist Erin Mills will cover the mutually beneficial relationship between insects—mostly butterflies—and bananas.
Fortunately, when all this talk of tasty fruits inevitably makes attendees hungry, HBG offers a bunch (yes, pun intended again) of opportunities to sample about 10 different banana varieties, or 10% of the 100 different edible banana types available globally. HBC grows 13 different varieties on its grounds so far, though it hopes to expand the collection over time.
This year, Millikin is especially thrilled to present two new bananas to the menu: the nam wah, which hails from Southeast Asia and is known for its intense sweetness, and Orinoco, which is native to Central America and possesses a lemony flavor.
The fruit isn’t the only part of a banana plant that’s edible. Banana flowers are often eaten in South Asian cuisine, and the starchy underground branch is dried and pounded into a flour for use in African and African diasporic dishes. In many ways, Go Bananas! represents Houston in microcosm, a story of us through our legendary food and status as the nation’s most ethnically and culturally diverse city.
Cooking demonstrations will be held throughout the festival as well, with this year’s event focusing on Cuban cuisine. There will also be a banana bread baking contest, with prizes awarded for best overall, best vegan, and best gluten-free breads. Winners are chosen based on audience vote. HBG asks for potential entrants to contact them at education@hbg.org before submitting their handiwork for consideration.
Chef Keisha Griggs preparing for the Go Bananas! pop-up dinner
Elizabeth Wingfield for Houston Botanic GardenFor a more substantial meal, visitors can also purchase tickets for the Go Bananas! Pop Up Dinner and Wine Tasting on June 2 starting at 6 p.m., or the Bananas Brunch on June 3 starting at 9:30 a.m. Chef Keisha Griggs of Kuji Kitchen and Bocage Catering will be overseeing the five-course dinner, which includes a banana blossom salad and chicken or mushroom mofongo. Vegan options are available.
The Bananas Brunch is presented by Fresh From Mars’ Marlies Wasterval, and features an all-vegan menu of four dishes served with coffee and mimosas. All tickets for meal events include admission to the Go Bananas! event itself.
HBG also offers a range of kid-friendly activities to help festival goers release all that pent-up energy provided via banana consumption. Throughout the day, participants may take part in a “murder” mystery game focused on a disappearing banana variety that once dominated grocery stores but now exists only as a novel rarity.
Kids (and maybe a few kids-only-at-heart) can also receive lessons on how to safely fake slipping on a banana peel to the impressed amusement of friends and family. The whole day concludes with Banana Bingo, a twist on the classic game interwoven with fun facts and mini-lectures on the titular topic.
After spending the day surrounded by one of the most-shipped fruits in the world, many festival goers may find themselves tempted to start raising banana trees of their own. Bananas are not indigenous to the Houston area’s subtropical climate, preferring the tropical locales one zone down. However, it still thrives here, and even with its non-native status doesn’t pose any threat toward our ecological stability.
A banana plant
Elizabeth Wingfield for Houston Botanic Garden“The big reason why it hasn’t become a problematic plant is that, like clumping bamboo, it grows in pads versus runners. Even though it’s running under the ground, it spreads in smaller increments at a time,” explains Millikin.
“The other saving grace that’s made it non-invasive is that all the bananas people are growing in the U.S. don’t have seeds… or they were bred to not have a viable seed.”
He also notes that “because [the banana plant] is non-native, it doesn’t lead to pest pressure,” and the large canopy makes for ideal shade when growing indigenous species.
Banana plants will not be for sale this year, though HBC does hope to offer pups at future events. Until then, Houston families still have bountiful other ways to learn everything there is to know about this ap-peel-ing (pun of course intended) dietary staple.
Go Bananas! runs from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. this Saturday, June 3, at Houston Botanic Gardens, 1 Botanic Lane. Member admission is free. Adult tickets are $15. Tickets for children between the ages of 3 and 15 are $10. For more information, visit the HBG website.
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