Bananas began being sold in London Markets in 1633

2026-04-09

Bananas began being sold in London Markets in 1633

On this day in the year 1633, people gathered outside a shop window in London to stare at something few of them had ever seen.

They was clusters of strange, curved fruits recently arrived from Bermuda.

This variety was a banana called "plantain" and were nothing like the sweet, familiar Cavendish variety many of us eat today. They likely were intended to be cooked and not eaten fresh.

I have a lot of experience with Caribbean variety bananas. They range from the fingerling appearing bunches to the gigantic "cut and fry” varieties common to tropical dinner tables in the southeast United States.

Over the years I have cultivated a taste for the various ways bananas are prepared and indeed, as they say the Cavendish variety is going away due to some fungal problem we may be relegated to the plantains once again in the future.