Cindy Lange-Kubick: A banana tree grows in Lincoln

Somewhere in Lincoln, in a warm room with a sloped ceiling, surrounded by delicate orchids and prickly cacti and dainty ferns, a very big banana tree is bearing bananas.

The bananas are on the small side — no bigger than a fat man’s fingers — and on the green side — more Shrek than Big Bird — but they are bananas just the same.

Bananas grown in Nebraska.

The appearance of the bananas on South 40th Street is akin to the sighting of a whooping crane on the Platte, or the Virgin Mary in toast form, a rare and wonderful oddity for fans of rare and wonderful oddities.

Like Leonard Frede.

Leonard is a middle-aged man with gray in his whiskers and mud splatters on the back of his khakis. A horticulturist at Campbell’s Nursery who saw a small shoot 18 months ago and dreamed of a wholesome, potassium-rich snack.

They grow plenty of banana plants at Campbell’s, Leonard says, in plenty of varieties.

The Basjoo. The Rowe Red. The Cavendish.

Most of the time customers take their plants home and set them on the patio or place them around the pool.

But because they can’t take the cold they wither and die.

Or get hauled into the house.

But rarely do they grow mature enough to grow tiny baby bananas, which will hopefully grow into ripe yellow bananas.

At the start, this was just a chunk of roots with the beginnings of a sprout, Leonard says when a visitor comes to view the bananas Wednesday morning.

But the sprout grew. And it grew.

And as it grew — along with two other similar sprouts —  Leonard watered it. And he fertilized it and put it in one pot and then another.

And endured the skepticism of his fellow workers.

Bananas?

Ha.

They pooh-poohed. They laughed.

And then a year passed. One winter in the greenhouse and another.

In the tropics where banana plantations are plentiful, banana trees bear fruit in nine months.

Leonard knew it would take longer and so he was patient.

He hauled the tree in and out, suffering his co-workers’ ridicule.

The sprouts grew until they filled a giant tree pot and stretched up to touch the clear greenhouse ceiling with broad leaves that Cleopatra would have looked lovely under, being fanned by a trio of well-muscled men.

But, still no fruit.

And then, one day three weeks ago, Leonard, vacationing in Costa Rica, where many banana trees grow, got an e-mail.

Bananas!!

On his banana tree. 

Leonard was pleased. Excited, even.

And Wednesday, the normally unexcitable plant man, points to a long spike growing out from one of the trees.

The spike is weighted with six green bunches, each with about 10 bananas, each one called a hand.

Each hand will ripen in turn, Leonard says, 60 bananas in all.

Then this banana tree will be barren. No more bananas.

But who knows, maybe the other two trees will grow spikes that will eventually fill with bunches of tiny green bananas that will ripen over the long Nebraska spring and summer.

These days Leonard shows the banana tree off to customers and small children. The store’s patriarch, 91-year-old Bob Campbell, comes to pay it a visit. And everyone who works at the nursery is excited about all the growing bananas and all those potential bananas yet to come.

Banana bread, perhaps? Banana pudding? Banana split?

All Leonard wanted to do was keep the tree growing long enough to bear fruit.

And all he is thinking of now is one small, sweet yellow banana.

The first banana.

Leonard has dibs.

Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.