Now imagine the tree is dying from an incurable disease. Actually, with some poetic license, that is the case. Bananas have seeds, and that is how they grow in the wild. But cultivated varieties are propagated by cuttings, a process sometimes called "suckering." They are genetically the same plant, vast plantations of cutting clones of a single ortet. The primary cultivated variety of banana, and really the only one sold in North America, is the Cavendish. And it is sick. Yes, we have no bananas Before the rise of Cavendish, the non-tropical Western world ate Gros Michel, a banana brought from Malaysia to the Caribbean in the late 18th Century.