“Bananas grow on trees”

Many people believe that the popular yellow fruit (Review), the banana, grows on trees, a misconception rooted in the plant's towering stature and woody-looking appearance. It's easy to mistake a banana plant for a tree given its impressive height, often reaching up to 25 feet (7.5 meters), and the way its fruit hangs in large bunches. This visual similarity to traditional trees, with their prominent trunks and canopy of leaves, has led countless individuals to assume they are one and the same.

However, despite appearances, banana plants are not trees at all. Scientifically, they are classified as giant herbs, making them more akin to lilies or ginger than oaks or maples. What most people perceive as a trunk is actually a "pseudostem," a structure formed by the tightly overlapping and spirally arranged leaf bases. This pseudostem lacks the woody tissue found in true tree trunks. The plant's real stem, a thick, underground structure called a corm or rhizome, produces new shoots and roots.

The fundamental difference lies in their botanical definition. Trees are perennial woody plants with a self-supporting main stem or trunk that branches out. Herbs, by contrast (Review), have non-woody stems and typically die back to the ground after their growing season, even if they are perennials. While a banana plant can live for many years, each pseudostem produces fruit only once before dying back, with new pseudostems emerging from the underground corm. This unique growth habit solidifies its classification as a colossal herb, busting the common belief.