For more tree-related weirdness, I recommend doing a Google Image Search for 'banana flower' and just scrolling through the pictures. I realized I'd never seen a banana flower before and they're really quite odd, as is pretty much everything associated with bananas.
I used to eat banana flowers lol its not difficult to find in the market here. Its interesting because the bananas we eat don't develop seeds and the flowers are downwards and the species that does develop seeds the flower is upwards (like musa velutina) its like the common bananas are not "strong" enough, so don't even bare seeds.
Many wild bananas have flowers that grow downwards, and have seeds (source, I've worked in two botanical gardens and lived next to one in Kenya, and have seen thousands of banana plants and grown many in my own garden).
The lack of seeds in the major crop bananas is due to selective breeding for seedlessness. Usually what happens with seedlessness is some part of the seed development or maturation molecular pathways are broken by a mutation, and selective breeding is used to fix that trait in the population (source, former seed biologist).
So the seedless banana plants are not generally weaker or stronger, just that they have a very specific mutation that prevents normal seeds appearing.
"There is only one population of king’s holly in the world, and scientists think it’s entirely clonal: Although it does occasionally flower, its fruit has never been seen. Recent radiocarbon dating suggests that it (they?) is at least 43,000 years old."
A banana plant has a stick up the middle. I'm just throwing that out there, because I thought they were trees until a week ago, when my neighbor offered me a plant. They yield fruit once and then die, feeding the daughter plants around it.
Simple: It has no cycles!