Musa formosana is not the same as Musa basjoo. The easiest way to tell is to look at the seeds! Apparently some M. balbisiana var. liukiuensis seed was once sold as M. formosana seed, so in this photo I show seed from these three species, plus M. velutina.
The M. formosana seed comes from Phil Markey at Trebrown Nurseries. The rest I collected. I'm putting photos of the M. basjoo plants from which I collected this seed, so that you can check that they really are M. basjoo seed. I've already uploaded photos of M. balbisiana var. liukiuensis.
Chiu et al (2004) distinguished between M. formosana and M. basjoo in a number of ways, including seed shape, but did not make clear the great size difference!
(By the way, nobody else seems to put copyright marks on their photos. Is it unnecessary? It's irritating to do all the time!)
