Re: Ensete pics
I'm a little surprised that E.ventricosum maurelli does that well in your area, most likely the cusp of it's cold tolerance. Right now Ensete ventricosum varieties seem to be the most cold hardy of the genus(zone 8)followed by E.glaucum(dry winter zone 9), and then the superbums(also like dry winters 9b-10a). Ensete perreri is unknown at this point, as well as that new species from Rare Palm Seeds. These are just estimations, but that what it seemed like they could handle in my cold greenhouse in zone 8a.
Steve- I'd like to see some hybrids, that would be great. One guy on the IPS was selling Ensete glaucum seeds from plantgs he grew himself, and he said that they self fertilized, but then he said that he had a Ensete superbum flower and it didn't produce any seeds. I'm not quite sure which superbum it was, but a non self seeding one would make it alot easier to tell if you had a good cross pollination. Other wise I think you have to cut down into the bract and cut of the pollen before it pollinates the stamen. Shouldn't be too hard to do, though...in theory.
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