Ty: Thanks for the warm comments my friend! I've been thinking a lot about the same thing. From my understanding, the whole USDA plant hardiness Zone designations refer to the average minimum winter temperatures, but it doesn't account for the total sum of "warm hours" (ie. hours of temperatures 70F and above). All other environmental factors being equal, I suspect time to maturity is directly proportional to the number of hours the plant is exposed to temperatures within their growing range.
In simpler terms, if you have warm days and warm nights during the grow season, even if you have colder winter lows, your bananas will develop much quicker than here. In my climate, we may have a couple of days in the 90's and above, but the nights cool down to the low 50's, so the cumulative time they are exposed to "heat hours" during our grow season is significantly lower than in Texas. It's not uncommon to have several weeks where the temperatures during our summer don't go above 74F.
While it could also be genetic, I suspect it's more environmental than anything else. My Musa Ice Cream, for example, took 2 years from planting the large sword pup to showing its first flag leaf. In the subtropics, even in zone 8, had it been cared for exactly the same, I wouldn't be surprised if it flowered in 8 months or less.
The fingers, once ripe, very much easily fall off the bunch, but they stay attached unless you handle them. The portion of the peel where the finger is attached to the "flower stem" is pretty thin and weak upon ripening.
Sputnic-thank you for the kind words! PM me if you have any paggi available, would love to purchase one, although I know it won't likely do well here. Still, you never know until you try.
I'm no ID expert, but some experts on this forum are pretty confident this is American Goldfinger. Gabe isn't caught up on the American goldfinger thing, and he couldn't ID this plant, so given this info, I'm inclined to believe it's American Goldfinger FHIA-1. Gabe can definitely ID a manzano:
I originally bought this plant as a rajpuri from a local farmer's market. You can find the whole discussion regarding ID of this plant in this thread:
Does this look like rajapuri? (flower pics)