Banana and Kiwi Grow Together-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
A viral video claims that combining banana and kiwi scraps allows you to grow a hybrid fruit that is a combination of the two.
The Truth:
Bananas and kiwi won’t grow as one if you plant clippings from the two fruits together.
That rumor started as an April Fool’s Day joke, but the punch line has since been lost on lots of people.
A video posted to the Kin Community YouTube channel on April 1, 2014, shows DIY crafter Robert Mahar showing viewers how to do amazing things with the scraps of fruits and vegetables that are thrown away every day.
In the video, which can be viewed here, Mahar is first shown re-growing a head of lettuce and radishes by placing scraps from the vegetables in a dish of water. Then, the gag peaks as Mahar combines the cut ends of banana and kiwi, places them in dirt, and then cuts into a full-grown banana-kiwi hybrid fruit.
Buried at the very bottom of notes about the video is a subtle reference to April Fool’s Day, which many of the video’s more than 600,000 viewers missed:
New fruit hybrids are often a hit and miss process of experimentation and results are not guaranteed. However, if you are able to successfully grow the beautiful banana and kiwi combination demonstrated in this video, we recommend you proceed directly to your corner market and purchase a lottery ticket. Wishing you a very happy April Fool’s Day!
In reality, some hybrid fruits are a reality. Hybrid fruit results when two plants from the same botanical species are cross-pollinated (not squished together and planted). And while this is possible, the process is meticulous and takes years, the Daily Beast reports:
A hybrid fruit is the result of cross-pollination of two plants from the same species or genus. When humans intervene in the process by selecting plants to pollinate for intentional results, the procedure is painstakingly meticulous and monitored. It may take years of selective breeding to produce a desired fruit. The plum-apricot hybrid known as the “pluot” took biologist Floyd Zaiger around 20 years to perfect before he introduced it to the market. Different from open-pollination (which is uncontrolled or varied pollination by insects, birds, winds, or natural causes), when the human hand brushes pollen from the male flower of one plant to the stigma of the flower of a female plant this type of hand-pollination delivers controlled results.
So, long story short, the claim that bananas and kiwi grow together is nothing more than an April Fool’s Day joke taken out of context.