I bought a banana tree in August of 2021 and never thought it would actually fruit. I was walking by it the other night and saw something purple/maroon out of the corner of my eye. Popped my head between some leaves and was greeted by some baby bananas!
Well you see, this dude is actually a moron who is quoting directly from the wikipedia page for “tree.” Trying to sound like he understands what he’s talking about. If he had done the due diligence of a first year botany student, he would at least have read the first paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana Which reads:
A banana is an elongated, edible fruit—botanically a berry[1]—produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus Musa.
I know you’re not addressing me. I just really don’t appreciate people who claim to experts in the field I have devoted the last ten years of my life to. Who then demonstrate that they don’t even understand what an herbivorous plant is.
Don’t listen to him, he’s just a wikipedia warrior.
Bro if you are going to throw shade, at least have the cajones to @ me.
I’ve taught first year botany and have a BSc in Botany. And I have graduate degrees in related fields.
This exact debate happening here is literally an exercise we do in the very first lab with first year botany students to highlight this exact issue: that there are differences in the technical use of language and the common use of language.
And the specific example we use? Guess what. Its “tree”. We literally run undergraduates through the exercise of attempting to define the word “tree” to show them the difference between technical and scientific uses of language and how we might colloquially discuss things.
The point is to show students how to be careful with their use of language, and that in the sciences, we try to work towards terms that are both exclusive and exhaustive to avoid the kind-of fuzziness associated with normal language.
I don’t need to @ you, anyone who reads this thread can see you and know who I’m referring to