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View Full Version : The Internal clock of Orinoco fruit


Simply Bananas
02-02-2009, 07:47 PM
I am always amazed at this. I had quite a few Orinocos bloom and fruit in 2008. The ones that bloomed in early summer plumped up and began turning yellow after 4 months. They had plenty of water food and sun.

The ones that bloomed in very late-summer never got as big. The cold snap hit in mid November they were cut from the tree. They were undersized, but just last week, I noticed that they were turning yellow. It was actually 4 months from when they bloomed. They were kept out of natural light in the garage from mid-november til now. It was cool to cold in the garage as well, below 60 for thirty or more days. Some nights were in the 30's.

Neither heat, nor sunlight, nor nutrition from the mother plant seemed to have any affect on the very consistent ripening time. It seems that 4 months of hot perfect weather=4 months of way less than ideal weather and conditions when it come to ripening time..

Sunlight hours, temps above 60f, or attachment to the mother plant seem inconsequential in ripening.

I'm not saying that the bananas were of equal quality, but that the ripening time is identical.

I have found this interesting over the years.

Bananaman88
02-03-2009, 07:19 AM
I had much the same experience. After Hurricane Ike blew over my fruiting stalk of 'Orinoco' this past summer I left them attached to the plant, though they never plumped up like they should. Ike's winds knocked them over about 2 months before I would have started harvesting them. Eventually, around Thanksgiving, I cut the entire stalk off an put it out on the table on my covered patio. When cool weather threatened, I would move them into the garage. Eventually I noticed one start showing some yellow so I cut it and a few others and brought them inside where they ripened right up. The taste and texture was still pretty good. The only thing I noticed different from bananas that had been allowed to ripen fully was that these all had a seam of the undeveloped seeds up the middle of the fruit that was dry and hard. Normally, the area around these undeveloped or sterile seeds is soft and one would eat that part as well. Not so on these. I had to eat around it. I made a banana milkshake the other night out of one of my Orinoco fruits and I simply took a knife and cut this area out. While they were edilbe, I'd still prefer them to develop and ripen normally.