JoeReal

Let me state my qualifications. I have been growing bananas for 39 years, from the Philippines to Texas to Southern to Northern California. Planted my first banana pup when I was 5 years old. Have dealt at least with more than 100 banana cultivars, if you agree to what a cultivar is, in this very big chaotic mess of naming bananas, then I do have more than twice that.

Todate, I only have 45 planting holes but I do have more than 355 fruiting cultivars, occupying only about 725 square ft of land. I have a world record citrus tree that I assembled and have 50 varieties on them and currently loaded with fruits on 35 cultivars. I have all of UC Riverside's blood oranges and pigmented oranges grafted together into one tree. My cherries are 2 dozen in one tree, my plums are 3 dozen to one tree, my asian pears, I have quite a collection in one tree, European pears, I only graft the best together, all of the pluots sold at retail nursery, I have them, even grapes were not forgiven when it comes to multi-grafts. My persimmons are almost ever blooming perhaps due to multi-graft interactions. And sport mutations, I will not be surprised with all of these multi-grafts.

Perhaps I am very lucky to see before my eyes sport mutations of bananas, as I have seen Saba plants that bloomed and bear fruit at 5 ft pseudostem height which was taken from a clump that usually towers to 25 ft high. I suspect there are others when it comes to variegation, but variegation isn't worth that much to me when I was after the fruits, so did not pay much attention to variegation. Mutations in bananas can be induced with stress, water, temperature, pH, also fungicides, insecticides, fertilizers, biological interactions with microbes, or simply taking out the pups. It is not as fast as Poof! like in TV shows, doesn't work that way.

Now right before my eyes, happening at this very moment, after plucking a pawpaw branch and planting it in a pot, amazingly that cutting grew and something is happening. Is this nutrient deficiency or pure variegated sport? the pattern of variegation looks the same as that of most variegated plants and it is happening only on one branch for now. Guess, I will have to nurture this, maybe repot it and hope the variegation stays.



There are more mutations happening left and right in this more polluted increasingly warming world. If you haven't seen anything, perhaps you needed to be more keen with your observations.

In this respect, by saying that CG and Orinoco are one and the same cultivar even if all testimonies and individual evidences presented, perhaps you could tell FHIA that Gran Nain, Dwarf Cavendish, Mahoi, Williams Hybrid, Regular Cavendish are one and the same. They exactly have the same shape of fruits, same taste, same color. The major differences at the supermarket is that their labels are Bonita, Dole, Del Monte, Chiquita. LOL!!!