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Adrian Lee
01-24-2007, 08:20 PM
:2691: Hi, There's a clump of banana plants in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, CA right by the Conservatory of Flowers. When I first saw them a few months ago I had no idea what they were. Now it looks to me to be some kind of Ensete. However Ensete isn't supposed to produce suckers, so I'm thinking maybe they planted a bunch of them close together. Can anybody identify what this is?
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o15/AdrianLee1272/Dec06-Jan07184.jpg
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o15/AdrianLee1272/Dec06-Jan07183.jpg
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o15/AdrianLee1272/Oct06114.jpg

STEELVIPER
01-24-2007, 08:35 PM
Ensete glaucum.The so called snow banana.

banana_fun
01-24-2007, 10:08 PM
Beautiful picture Adrian. Thanks for sharing it. :woohoonaner:

Gabe15
01-24-2007, 10:44 PM
Ensete glaucum.The so called snow banana.

I disagree. It looks to me like someone threw a handful of Ensete ventricosum seeds on the ground. Ensete glaucum is called so because it has a bluish tint from the heavy wax content (gluacum=blue). Although this has green bracts and no red, they tend to be very variable in color, and also growing conditions play a major role in the color or a plant.

Tropicallvr
01-25-2007, 02:14 PM
I have heard of that clump of Ensete ventricosum being there for quite a while in GG park. It seems like it would have flowered out by now, unless it is producing viable seeds or clumping.
Up here in a town called Fortuna(CA) there was a single E.ventricosum that produced short fat orange bananas, but I never got to check to see if they had seeds.

Adrian Lee
01-25-2007, 03:36 PM
Thanks for the replies. Ensete ventricosum it is then? I thought it looked particularly impressive. I gotta go by there and check out the development of the flowers and take more pictures!:2237:

Gabe15
01-25-2007, 03:51 PM
This picture is of me with a flowering E. ventricosum at Quail last summer. The ground was littered with literally hundreds of seeds, I collected a few handfuls. Also there was some fruit still hanging on the bunch and I collected some seeds from those too.
http://www.bananas.org/gallery/watermark.php?file=2023&size=1 (http://www.bananas.org/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=2023&ppuser=5)

chong
01-25-2007, 04:23 PM
This picture is of me with a flowering E. ventricosum at Quail last summer. The ground was littered with literally hundreds of seeds, I collected a few handfuls. Also there was some fruit still hanging on the bunch and I collected some seeds from those too.


Nice picture, Gabe. That's a nice place. Where is it? Any other interesting plants there?

Chong