Banana Palms

Banana Palms - Objective/Subjective Science Essay - By Alexa Weber

Ever since I met my first banana tree in the Dominican Republic, I have been in love with them. What a beautiful tree! Tree that captures the glory of the tropical paradise that is Hispanola, with its broad purple flowers, its waxy palm fronds, and its ubiquitous fruit (the banana, which in Ancient India was considered to be the “forbidden fruit” of the garden of Eden!)

Banana palms evoke an air of adventure, awe and mystery, as if they hold the secret of paradise. One of my first encounters with these pristine trees was while walking along a trail in a lush palm forest, where they grew wild and untamed. I was with teammates and we were busy inviting local Dominicans to our drama, but we always took time to pause and squeal with delight -- “LOOK! BANANAS!”

A year later I went to Haiti, where banana palms also flourish. There, however, the entire country has been stripped of much of its natural vegetation, and the trees grew in fields, like corn. One of these banana fields was right outside of our “home” in Haiti, and we had fun browsing the fields and plucking off the whorls or “suckers” which are the rolled up, infant palm leaves. These twisted whorls made the ideal toy expandable swords, and I amused myself often by trying to unroll these.

When you set foot on a tropical island, the simplest things become EXTREMELY amusing! In addition to the banana crop, a little palm-forest was a highlight of the backyard. One afternoon I left on a little “safari” into the back yard . . . and I didn’t come back! (well, at least not for a while) My teammates were starting to worry when finally I returned with a giant palm branch, probably twice my size. I’d wrestled with breaking off the leaf, which was VERY firmly and fibrously attached. My teammates immortalized this incident in our team “log” of quirky moments as “Alexa picked a fight with a tree . . . the tree almost won.” I returned triumphant, however, and before we knew it I’d fashioned a lovely hula skirt for the missionary’s little daughter with it, as well as one for myself.

The flower of the banana tree is particularly fascinating. One particular banana tree that grew outside of the house produced a flower that was quite a bit larger than our heads. It looked like some form of man-eating plant, and several girls from the trip look at the pictures of it and shudder -- “That plant, like totally freaked me out!” Whether it was a man-eating monster or not, we all enjoyed inspecting it each day, as it shed its giant rubbery petals, that were something like banana peel, and, of course, we posed for many pictures with the monster-flower.

Banana palms conjure up all of the wonderful mission field memories. Oh, that I could have a banana tree in my own backyard! My project director, however, concluded my first mission trip with an unforgettable illustration. Holding up a palm frond during debriefing, in all its glossy green glory, he reminded us that as Christians we must be able to flourish wherever God puts us. While gazing at our banana-palm-pictures evokes sighs and a desire to go back to Hispanola, I am also reminded that God has planted me here and this is where I belong right now. Will I be a tree that can only flourish on the mission field on a tropical island somewhere? Or, will I be a tree that sets its roots down deep and that survives, ever green, whatever seasons of life may come?