Quote:
Originally Posted by mskitty38583
oh i forgot you went home for the holidays, im sorry. i was just wondering if the wild banana( like in hawaii, or other parts of the world) is in such decline, could they not use seed to replace them? if there is a such thing as a seeded wild banana still left on the planet?( i dont know if there is or not.) and if there is a such thing, could we not get the seeds to reintroduce these said wild bananas? i was only asking because i read a few post about their decline(wild nanas) and it seems that everyone wants the "new " bananas,and are they trying to tc. or raise the wild one from the dead to keep them from going extinct? i was trying to keep it simple, but my mind dosent work that way sometimes. thats why i asked if seed could be sent to the mainland from hawaii.( is it my misunderstanding that hawaiian nanas cant be shipped to the u.s. because of a fungus or a diease- was wondering if it was the same for seeds) thank you.
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Well, there are no real wild bananas in Hawaii, but the many in Asia (where they are native to) are becoming increasingly threatened by introgression of closely populated species caused mainly by deforestation (since bananas generally do not grow in the dense forest, it becomes a natural separator of different species/subspecies/varieties, but when it is gone, they move into the same area and can interbreed into a single homogenous population. However, the ones that do live in the forest are naturally threatened by deforestation as well). There are still millions of wild bananas out there, as a whole they are not in any threat of extinction, just threatened by loss of diversity in some regions, but even this only goes so far.
All of the different unusual wild species are being collected and preserved as we speak, there is no real threat of preserving the diversity once it is obtained, the threat still does remain though for those which have not been collected or discovered yet.
I think you must have read something like Popular Science or others who have seen and quoted similar articles, I feel there is a lot of misunderstanding about bananas in general outside of those who are actively involved with them. The Smithsonian Magazine did a wonderful article on bananas a few years back, unfortunately it is one of the very few common articles on bananas out there that is not complete junk (like the Popular Science article).
Regarding exporting plants/seeds from Hawaii, it is a lot easier than getting them into the state, but still requires quite a bit of work I have yet to fully look into. I don't think it will be too hard though (once I get everything set up) to have small tissue cultured plants sent to the US mainland from Hawaii.