bigdog

Nice mat! I have my mat in full sun, and it does fine here in Knoxville. It's very cold-hardy also. I am sticking to my theory that the banana in the last photograph is, in fact, NOT Musa itinerans, but m. yunnanensis. Here is part of the original description of Musa itinerans, from Cheesman (1949):

Plant stooling freely and developing long rhizomes which turn up 2 metres and more away from the parent stem ; pseudostems attaining 4 m. or more in height, 20 - 25 cm. in diameter at base, green with varying development of reddish-brown or blackish pigmentation according to age and exposure ; leaf-sheaths and petioles devoid of wax.

The highlights in bold are certainly not true of the plants in the picture in question. Simmonds (1956) also points out:

Study of the geographically intermediate forms - if any - in Indochina and southern China would be extremely interesting. I have seen a number of herbarium specimens of wild bananas from Yunnan but have unfortunately been unable to identify them with any confidence".



I wonder if this banana is one of the intermediate forms that he couldn't identify with any confidence! It is from the Yunnan province...