JoeReal

rsiemenski: Have you ever tried getting tissue-cultured bananas from eBay?

What you consider as the worst looking banana would seem to be first class to me, as far as bananas go, and was wondering why you complain when it is really a premiere, more than the above average kind of bananas that you would usually get.

For some of us, just ship us a banana with mangled-up leaves and pseudostems, with no roots, as long as the corm is hard, we know that it will live. It is going to take time though, but we know it will live. Here, you've got good quality roots that was just packed so that it will fit the shipping boxes, and the bananas are good to go to resume growth in a shorter time, and you are complaining about them.

I am not a for-profit banana seller and I would be scared to ship bananas to you. I often ship bananas without leaves and roots, but only if I know that the other party receiving it is a veteran banana grower who would know what is the most important part of the banana plant for it to grow.

Unlike the tissue cultured plants in eBay, most of those corms are not yet formed well, if the top gets chopped off, oftentimes, they won't recover. But if somebody shipped me just the corm without leaves and roots, I still know it is a lot better than those tiny plantlets with leaves.

The bottom line is that you are very lucky to get such fantastic looking plants for such miniscule prices. I wouldn't care if these are a foot shorter or more, perhaps some low paying guys that they paid to measure the height misunderstood and measured from the tip of the roots to the tip of the leaves, nonetheless, those are really good looking plants for the price you've paid. I bet that those poor folks who sold you the plants are making profit at this point.