Not just similar. Cavendish bananas (the usual kind here in the US) are all clones, each from a tree grafted from a tree grafted, all the way back, from the first tree of the species in the UK.

There are problems with this.

Sure, the banana is the most reliable fruit. The banana marketing folks don’t have to worry about uniformity.

But the monoculture is fragile. When the virus that kills this species spreads, they’ll all disappear.

And there’s little room for innovation, for positioning or to be anything more than a commodity provider. It’s hard to tell a story about a better banana when bananas are all so obviously the same.

My best advice is to avoid being a banana farmer.