On this spring day in 1633, people assembled outside a shop window in Holborn, central London, captivated by an unusual sight: a bunch of strange, curved fruits, green with a soft yellow hue under the English sunlight. These were bananas—and, to most Londoners, they appeared confusing and oddly reminiscent of something phallic.
Thomas Johnson, a renowned botanist and apothecary with a penchant for spectacle, organised the display. On 10th April, he exhibited the fruit in his shop, marking Britain’s first encounter with bananas. Crowds gathered, not to buy—since the fruit was probably too expensive and unfamiliar—but simply to stare.
There are no records indicating whether Johnson sold any of these new fruits. During a period when colonisation and global trade were reshaping English diets, the banana was regarded as a wonder.
The initial bananas probably arrived bruised after travelling from Bermuda across the Atlantic. These weren’t like the sweet Cavendish bananas familiar today, which were only developed in the 1800s. Johnson’s bananas were likely starchy plantains intended for cooking, and he apparently didn’t like them much. While editing John Gerard’s popular botanical book, The Herball, he likely added the note: ‘the fruit hereof yieldeth but little nourishment…and hurteth the stomach if too much of it be eaten.’
Bananas only became widespread in Britain two centuries later, thanks to steamships and refrigeration. However, on that 1633 day in a small Holborn shop, Londoners caught a glimpse of a broader world through a strange bunch of unfamiliar fruits.