Now that I know what this plant is, all photos and updates will be consolidated into this post. Originally, I purchased a Musa "Ice Cream" TC start from Greenearth Publishing in late 2014. Many had said these turn out to be either Namwah or orinoco, but in my case, it turned out to be Rajapuri.
Here's a photo of the rajapuri TC start, it was overwintered indoors during the winter of 2014-2015 and then planted outdoors in July of 2015. Here's a few days after it was planted outdoors here in Northern California:
August 2015:
Group shot, rajapuri is the second plant from the top:
February 2016, after being exposed to a few light frosts, rajapuri is second from the top:
July 18, 2016-rajapuri to the right of the variegated aeae:
Nov 2016-the original TC watersprout bloomed! Regretfully it flowered too late: the fingers were very tender and couldn't take months of cold, wet weather despite being under greenhouse plastic:
Closer photo of the flowers:
Big Fingers! unfortunately, these all rotted away:
this is what failure looks like:
But looking on the bright side, I got more than expected from this failure: a positive ID! Notice the persistent male bracts:
And rarely does one succeed without failing! The first ratoon replaced the dead bunch and flowers first opened on 4/20/17!
Challenge is, it's been a very cold spring, with 2 heat waves mixed in, so with this crazy weather comes semi-choking (rajapuri is infamous for choking). The inflorescence won't push out of the p-stem, it's sorta stuck there and not hanging like normal bunches would do. Any suggestions on how to correct this?
Despite the plant being almost 1.5x the size of the watersprout TC starter plant, the fingers on this first ratoon are about 1/2 the size when flowering:
Here's a better picture to give you an idea:
To be continued....looks like I'll get this bunch to finish since it flowered so early in the season, but it's hard to say what will happen to the bananas jammed between petioles and the p-stem...