As for this thread, I had
no intention of hunting down the
Musa violascens. I got up very early this morning to see an aborigine village head who is located on the foothills of the Western central highlands. My main purpose was to get him to collect a big leaf spotted
Dracaena for my professor friend in Thailand who wants it for breeding. Currently this plant is undescribed. Somehow, our conversation turned to wild
musa and he showed me a couple of plants in the wild.
Joke of the day? When I asked him what the aborigines call this plant, he pointed to me, laughing -
Pisang Tok! I almost fell down laughing too!
They are very scarce in this area according to him and we only found 3 plants with small pups. As they are rare here, I did not collect any. I will keep coming back to photograph their progress as they flower. I couldn't get a pix of the flower on one of the plants as it was too high up. We had to cut the flower and fruits down for photo purposes. The big plants here grow to about 9ft in p-stem height. I suppose they will get smaller when kept dry or in a pot.
Here, these plts seem to like very wet, waterlogged areas. It was not a joy getting to the other plants because of the blood donation campaign run by the local leech association.
I will keep this thread open for those who are interested in this species. I was very annoyed when I searched the net and can't find a even 1 image of this species. I was notified by another aborigine about an area
'infested' with this species. I will find the time to go there and get pix back for you guys.
Between this and the much hyped about
Musa gracilis, I prefer the
Musa violascens for its foliage and flower size. Currently I am growing a couple of plants from the north given to me my one of my aborigine friends. At this point, some of you may wonder about my association with these people. The aborigines or
Orang Asli are a very nice bunch of folks and I have been with them for more than 10 years hunting for all sorts of reptiles. I learnt a lot from them in their jungle craft.
Hope you like the pix. Cheers!
I managed to get a top pix of the plant as the bottom is obscured by all sorts of plants. I really love the beautiful foliage - a nice mid greed semi gloss top and bottom. It is a young plant about 4ft in p-stem height.
This is a close up of the p-stem. See how clean looking it is.
Detail of the undersurface of the leaf. The mid rib is yellow.
Here's a pix of the flower bud and immature fruits. Flower is almost 10 inches!
Ah... Here's the main difference between the
M gracilis and
M violascens. As you can see from the close up, the fruits of the
M violascens is
double row in the hand. For
M gracilis, it's
one row only.
