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After 4 years my banana tree decided it was time to fruit! (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/houseplants@mander.xyz
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I bought a banana tree in August of 2021 and never thought it would actually fruit. I was walking by it the other night and saw something purple/maroon out of the corner of my eye. Popped my head between some leaves and was greeted by some baby bananas!

baby bananas
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[–] 12 points 1 year ago* (7 children)

You seem to be making two points here:

  1. That people colloquially call it a tree, so don't "correct" it. We know what they are talking about.

That seems fair enough.

But then you seem to say that:

  1. There is no definition of what a tree or herb is so you can't separate the two. The term is used to describe non woody growth that dies back (among other things). How can you say the word herbaceous is not a testable definition?

I don't think it is pedantic at all. I have a banana patch, and I certainly consider them bushes instead of trees. I think people are interested in finding out the trivia that a banana tree is not a tree, but an herb.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (3 children)
    1. There is no definition of what a tree or herb is so you can’t separate the two.

    So thats not quite what I said. I said that is that there is no technical definition of tree or herb. The word "tree" is a classic example of this and is often used in introductory botany classes to highlight this specific difference and to teach students about the technical use of language. What is a tree? Obviously we could agree that an Oak is a tree? Its tall, and has leaves. But bamboo is also tall. It has leaves. Is it a tree? Does a tree have to be a dicot? What about a Palm tree? What about Welwitschia? Its only got two leaves and barely grows above the ground. I have a basil that I can't reach the top branches of, its been growing for years. Its woody as hell. Is it a tree? A pine sapling is soft and fleshy when its young. Is it an herb? A carrot that goes to long can get woody. Parsley can grow indefinitely. Where is the line?

    And thats the difference in the use of language. Technical and scientific language strives to be mutually exclusive & collectively exhaustive. People work hard to come up with good definitions which are testable, and when people use them incorrectly, we should correct them.

    And yes, I would agree, herbaceous is a testable word. We could come up with technical ways to evaluate the "herbaciousness" of a plant. But herb and tree are not, or at least, how they are used in regular language, we could not come up with a definition which is both exclusive and exhaustive. We couldn't make a Venn diagram of "tree" and not get some "herbs" and vice versus.

    And regular language, its not like that at all. Its fine for terms to be overlapping or inconclusive or vague to describe fuzzy sets. Your bananas are shrubs and mine are trees. And maybe for someone else they are herbs. And all of those are fine as long as communication is supported.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Well we could say that anything wet is water. But we know that isnt true. This is similar. The definition, even to a layman, of what herbaceous means is not that much of a stretch compared to a notion of a tree.

    The point being is we could call them all plants. But we like to break things into categories, and in the case our science has categorized a banana as an herb. Definitively as far as I can tell, and when they are observed you can see why.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yeah, but this person is pretending to understand horticulture at a level he is not educated in. So, he makes a lot of mistakes in his arguments because he's just paraphrasing what he finds through searching the web. Case and point

    You can’t grow them like an “herb”, whatever tf that is.

    Once you read that point he's made. You know he doesn't understand what he's talking about.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    Bro don't clown me.

    Educated? I have 3 degrees in the plant sciences. A BS in Botany (not a related field, an actual "botany" degree from one of the very few schools that offer that specific degree), an MSc in plant science and a PhD in a related field, spatial geography (my research is in remote sensing, and is largely related to the remote sensing of plants). I'm literally a publishing author, and I usually get brought in because of my background in plant science.

    I've taught undergraduate botany, including the lab sections. During my undergraduate degree I worked in a paleobotany lab, studying plant evolution and thin section woody plant fossils. During one of my graduate degrees, I worked in a plant physiology lab, literally doing acid digestion of woody plant material to look to quantify the amounts lignin and cellulose.

    So if you want to throw shade and do some dick measuring, you better make sure you are packing.

    And, specifically, this exact exercise around how words like "tree" and "herb" are different than technical language, its something we run first year Botany students through to highlight the difference between how we as scientists use language and how that differs from how non-technical people use language. In the exercise I've literally run undergraduates through, its literally the word "tree" we have them focus on. Its an exercise we do in the very first lab we do so we can reset their understandings around the use of language.

    Flat out: There isn't a technical definition of the word tree. Its not a how we think of things in botany. That doesn't mean we can't describe something as "woody", because that has specific definitions. Definitions we can test and quantify.

    I can do a thin section and a chemical stain for celluose, or hemicellulose, or lignin. But guess what? I'll find all three in Banana. So is Banana not a tree if it has all the major bio-molecules associated with wood? Its got all the chemistry.

    You should actually go through the exercise of trying to define what a "tree" is in such a way that nothing you consider an "herb" is included.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Well you see, this dude is actually a moron who is quoting directly from the wikipedia page for "tree." Trying to sound like he understands what he's talking about. If he had done the due diligence of a first year botany student, he would at least have read the first paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana Which reads:

    A banana is an elongated, edible fruit—botanically a berry[1]—produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus Musa.

    I know you're not addressing me. I just really don't appreciate people who claim to experts in the field I have devoted the last ten years of my life to. Who then demonstrate that they don't even understand what an herbivorous plant is.

    You can’t grow them like an “herb”, whatever tf that is.

    Don't listen to him, he's just a wikipedia warrior.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Bro if you are going to throw shade, at least have the cajones to @ me.

    I've taught first year botany and have a BSc in Botany. And I have graduate degrees in related fields.

    This exact debate happening here is literally an exercise we do in the very first lab with first year botany students to highlight this exact issue: that there are differences in the technical use of language and the common use of language.

    And the specific example we use? Guess what. Its "tree". We literally run undergraduates through the exercise of attempting to define the word "tree" to show them the difference between technical and scientific uses of language and how we might colloquially discuss things.

    The point is to show students how to be careful with their use of language, and that in the sciences, we try to work towards terms that are both exclusive and exhaustive to avoid the kind-of fuzziness associated with normal language.

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