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View Full Version : My "wild" Florida banana flowering!


bananaT
05-04-2012, 01:10 AM
Well I am very excited! This is the first time one of my bananas has flowered in some time... Only 10 or so years! Yikes!
Just do to a series of unfortunate events.

But here at last its happening!
This particular plant is one of my bananas I found out in the wilds of Florida.

I found this one, well its ancestor of course, on the side of the highway.
I like to explore. I was walking out in a really rural stretch, pretty deep in the woods. And right smack in the middle of nowhere, was a huge clump of this banana.

I just had to take a pup home. That was about 5 years ago.
I have about 20 growing behind the goat shed now, you can see in the picture.

Its a beautiful interesting banana. Hopefully it will have nice fruit.
If anyone can help ID it that would be nice?
I have never seen one in person before that has the elongated bracts like this one does. I'm normally seeing the short fat deep maroon colored ones.
They are pretty cold tolerant too, they can go right down to freezing without damage, and below that the stalk survives fine.

I just took this picture today, well yesterday, the 3rd, its 2am right now.
I will post pictures as the bud develops, if you guys are interested...

http://www.bananas.org/gallery/watermark.php?file=48705&size=1 (http://www.bananas.org/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=48705&ppuser=11500)

caliboy1994
05-04-2012, 01:22 AM
I'll make a guess....Orinoco.

sunfish
05-04-2012, 08:34 AM
I'll make a guess....Orinoco.

Same here

bananaT
05-09-2012, 11:43 AM
I just took this other picture today. Its a bit dark, Its an overcast day.
You can see the female flowers that just popped out this morning..

http://www.bananas.org/gallery/watermark.php?file=48737&size=1 (http://www.bananas.org/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=48737&ppuser=11500)

oakshadows
05-09-2012, 06:03 PM
Keep us posted. Always enjoyment when a plant grows and produces. I think the plant is as they said, an Orinoco. Very good plant for central Florida, we hope to get some fruit this year from ours also. Thanks

bananaT
06-23-2012, 01:39 AM
Iv been meaning to post here.

This picture was taken a few days ago. You can see the bananas are fattening up nicely. You can see on the left there that one of the other stalks is flowering too!

Not to many bunches this time, but you can see the huge pups coming in, they will hopefully have more fruit.

http://www.bananas.org/gallery/watermark.php?file=49396&size=1 (http://www.bananas.org/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=49396&ppuser=11500)

caliboy1994
06-23-2012, 01:55 AM
Definitely Orinoco :ha:

bananaT
06-23-2012, 02:05 AM
Thats good to know, I like to have names for everything...