Re: This is one large pup.
Roots are not the issue. The corm of the mama naner is. Think of the corm, or bulb, as the mother ship and the pups as the much smaller space ships like in the movie Fourth of July. They were nested, embedded, around the mother ship surface. That's as far as that analogy goes and we can take our starfleet academy hats off now.
This my experience. First planting of a baseball sized corm will send up the parent. Pups will devlop around the sides of the mama corm. As more and more leaves emerge the corm will grow in size and the pups will get bigger as well. Good mat management dictates that only 2 pups be allowed to stay with mama. All others should be cut out. I wait till pups are 12 to 18 inches tall so they will pot up well with enough vigor to overcome xplant shock.
A banana corm in the ground for a year will be large with much stored energy. As an experiment, someday when you have too many naners, or at somebody else's house, commit mamacide by machete one foot above ground level. The two pups will take off quickly and a whole ring of new pups will appear around the mama corm in less than a month. Could be 6 to 8 or more new pups depending on how big, how much stored energy, the mama corm developed. I'm pretty sure this a practice used in a start up operation or mat relocation by nurseries.
Dan
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