This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories.

And our next story comes to us from a man who's simply known as the History Guy. His videos

are watched by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages over on YouTube. And the History Guy is

also heard as a regular contributor here at Our American Stories. If you think of the quintessential

American fruit, it would probably be the apple.

But apples are not our cheapest fruit. Bananas are. But why? Here's the history guy with the

story of the banana. Here's an interesting trivia question. Do you happen to know what item is

most sold at Walmart?

I'll give you a hint. It's a berry that grows from an herb, or if you come from the United

Kingdom, a herb. Here's another hint. The herb is in the family Musicae, and the most popular

version of this berry is called the Cavendish. And if you still don't know, does it help to know

that it was among the first fruits to be domesticated by humans, that it is so historically

important that empires have been built on it and governments overthrown because of it,

and that comedians have made entire careers slipping on its peel. Some scientists estimate that the banana was domesticated as early as 8,000 BC,

and there's written evidence that the cultivation of bananas had reached India by 6,000 BC.

Thus bananas were possibly domesticated at approximately the same time as rice and potatoes, predating

the domestication of apples by millennia.

The banana fruit is produced from the ovary of a single flower, in which the outer layer

of the ovary wall develops into an edible fleshy portion.

Thus, bananas are, by the botanical definition, a berry.

There are more than a thousand species of

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