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Old 11-29-2012, 12:55 PM   #17 (permalink)
Gabe15
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Default Re: Why Do Banana Plants Pup?

The plant looks like M. basjoo to me, but some close up photos of the petioles would help secure an ID.

As for the suckering, this is very common from tissue cultured plants. The reason is that they have been growing in a growth medium with sucker-inducing hormones for many months, right at the end, they are switched to a different medium, but often there is residual effects. Additionally, during that last stage of micropropagation, it is very easy to transfer pieces of tissue which have many buds on them, so when they are added to the "elongation medium" with different hormones to promote shoot growth, all of the buds will start developing and you get many suckers, often they are very thin and weak water suckers, but if carefully separated they will grow into new plants just fine. Of course all of this is very dependent on the variety in question, but at least in my experience it is a rather common occurrence.
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