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AlastairCulham
11-04-2013, 05:40 PM
Hi, I teach plant diversity at Reading University. In our tropical glasshouse we grow Musa dasycarpa and a dwarf cavendish banana. Both are currently flowering. I'm interested in your site to keep up to date with banana ID. You can see many of the plants we grow on our blog Tropical Biodiversity | Just another blogs.reading.ac.uk site (http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/tropical-biodiversity/). One of our students from Thailand posted a lengthy blog on bananas last spring Musaceae – GIANT HERBS not trees! | Tropical Biodiversity (http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/tropical-biodiversity/2013/02/musaceae-giant-herbs-not-trees/) including some nice photos she took. It's not all bananas on our blog though!

kubali
11-04-2013, 05:43 PM
Hi, I teach plant diversity at Reading University. In our tropical glasshouse we grow Musa dasycarpa and a dwarf cavendish banana. Both are currently flowering. I'm interested in your site to keep up to date with banana ID. You can see many of the plants we grow on our blog Tropical Biodiversity | Just another blogs.reading.ac.uk site (http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/tropical-biodiversity/). It's not all bananas though!

Welcome aboard,bet you have fun here.great place with some great people....

Abnshrek
11-04-2013, 05:45 PM
Hello, Welcome & Happy Harvesting.. :^)

Richard
11-04-2013, 08:20 PM
... It's not all bananas on our blog though!

It's not all bananas here either :)

Olafhenny
11-05-2013, 07:45 PM
The Germans have a category for plants, in which the leaves grow straight out of the ground
like in pineapple, aloe, lettuce and sometimes form pseudo stems like in bananas and cannas.
They call them ‘Stauden’, a definition, which is unfortunately missing in the English language,
leading to such misnomers as ‘banana tree’.

I have often wondered, what else I should call these ‘things’ and evaded the problem, by
calling them simply ‘plants’ – any better suggestions?

Richard
11-05-2013, 11:15 PM
The Germans have a category for plants, in which the leaves grow straight out of the ground
like in pineapple, aloe, lettuce and sometimes form pseudo stems like in bananas and cannas.
They call them ‘Stauden’, a definition, which is unfortunately missing in the English language,
leading to such misnomers as ‘banana tree’.

I have often wondered, what else I should call these ‘things’ and evaded the problem, by
calling them simply ‘plants’ – any better suggestions?


I believe you are speaking of Monocots versus Dicots (http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/glossary/gloss8/monocotdicot.html).

Olafhenny
11-06-2013, 12:56 AM
Hi Richard,

I believe that is a different method of distinguishing between plants. Lettuce is clearly a
dicot, but a ‘staude’ I have no idea, if bananas or cannas are monocots, because I have
never raised either from seeds, though from rhizomes they start out with a single leaf.

The term ‘staude in German refers to stemless herbs such as the ones I have listed in my
previous post, though some do develop stems as the shoot into seeds. Tomatoes, cucumbers
or fuchsia on the other hand grow stems even in conjunction with the primary leaves. Thus
that distinction of ‘staude’ is strictly based on structural properties and possibly not on the
number of primary leaves. Admittedly I do not know much about seedlings.

Best,
Olaf

Richard
11-06-2013, 01:08 AM
Hi Richard,
I believe that is a different method of distinguishing between plants. Lettuce is clearly a
dicot, but a ‘staude’ I have no idea, if bananas or cannas are monocots, because I have
never raised either from seeds, though from rhizomes they start out with a single leaf.

The term ‘staude in German refers to stemless herbs such as the ones I have listed in my
previous post, though some do develop stems as the shoot into seeds. Tomatoes, cucumbers
or fuchsia on the other hand grow stems even in conjunction with the primary leaves. Thus
that distinction of ‘staude’ is strictly based on structural properties and possibly not on the
number of primary leaves. Admittedly I do not know much about seedlings.

Best,
Olaf


Maybe this is more useful:
Monocotyledon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocots)

Olafhenny
11-06-2013, 01:23 AM
Well, I was aware, that all grasses were monocots (I have sown enough of them to know :)).
They are also ‘stauden’ strictly speaking, while I would have reserved this term for bigger
plants, which grow more in a singular separate fashion. But you may be right, that all
monocots are ‘stauden’. I just do not know enough, to know for sure.

merce3
11-06-2013, 10:08 AM
welcome. very interesting blog!