momoese

In the last batch of plants I removed from the HA stand I found one pup with some wine stains. This pup had been cut short and regrew so maybe that had something to do with it.

Iunepeace

Thanks momo. It does seem like there are instances in these varieties where there are at least some marginal wine staining, such as in your case with the pup. As for the pink coloring in your picture, another sucker that I took from the mat I received the large banana from has been recently planted and pushed out a sucker that's almost wholly pink

The midribs of most of the large banana have pink coloring as well.

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Iunepeace

Hey all! Wow, it's been more than a year since the last post on this thread.

Good news! I still have no idea what kind of banana the plant is (lol) but I have lot more pictures now, and some photos of the first bunch it bore last fall that should help. Let me know what you think!


First flower (sometime last July)





Love this petal color





Bunch growing





Closeup of fingers





Closeup of bud





Mum with harvested bunch





Dad with harvested bunch





Closeup of harvested bunch





My parents said they were very good! I know they cooked a few of the green ones and ate them (couldn't wait for them to ripen I guess lol) and I'm not sure if they let any ripen fully before eating, so I can't say whether they're sweet or not. Any thoughts on what type of banana it might be?

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PR-Giants

Nice Bunch!!!

It looks like a Dwarf Bom, an excellent cooking banana.

TARS 18019 - Musa hybr. - Bom - Belgium

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venturabananas

I assume Keith is having a joke at our expense. It is something in the Bluggoe subgroup, Orinoco or a close relative. The key features are very angular fruit and few fingers per hand. Bom is in the Pisang Awak subgroup (which included Dwarf Namwah) and is very different.

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Iunepeace

Thanks for the replies both of you!

Keith, I think I agree with Mark on this one. The Bom in the link seems to be a much more slender plant than the one I have (with wider spacing between leaves, seems taller, etc) and the bud is much more tear shaped with longer looking fingers than mine. Thank you very much for the opinion though, keep those guesses coming

Mark, I am leaning towards it being in the same family as Orinoco, for the same blunt features you mention. However, while the fruit is a bit blocky (lol), the hands all had 10-15+ fingers on them so I'm not sure if it's directly related. Do you know anything in the Bluggoe group that has lots of fingers per hand? Also, what genotype group are Bluggoes?

Thanks again.

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robguz24

They look a lot like Ice Creams to me, especially in the first and last pictures. Or the similar Silver Bluggoe.

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sunfish

Isn'tg it easy to tell if it is ice cream by the ice cream taste ?

venturabananas

Rob, I was thinking Ice Cream, too, based on their shape and what they looked like the in sink photo, but they didn't seem blue enough in the flower stage on the bunch on the plant. But you've seen a lot more of them than I have.

Dan, the Bluggo subgroup (which according to Keppler and Rust includes Ice Cream), has ABB genetics.

The number of fingers per hand is on the high end for what I've seen in Bluggoe, but not unreasonable. On the other hand, pardon the pun, 10 fingers is way too low for your typical, healthy Pisang Awak.

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venturabananas

Yep, tastes just like mint chocolate chip.

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sunfish

As long as they don't have a banana taste that's good.

robguz24

I thought so too regarding the color, but they look much more blue in the sink photo. I've taken pics of mine and often find they look less blue than they seem in real life. Also something about the tips make them look just like some other ice creams I harvested a bit early. Kepler also mentions that sometimes they aren't as blue as they normally are. Also, the p-stem picture is that typical yellowish green that all my ice creams have, that my namwah don't have.

Here's the shot I have that looks most like the sink picture.



And another, more ripe and less blue.

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Iunepeace

Thanks again for the quick replies.

Good to know that the fingerage on the hands are not over the expected amounts for the Bluggoe Keith (nice pun by the way), and correct if I'm wrong but those in the ABB group don't exhibit pinkage right? I'm pretty sure the pups on this one had pink tints growing up.

You're certainly putting my hopes up Rob lol. I'd love for this to be an Ice Cream; and they do have a sheen in the sink picture. The problem is that while this was ripening I was in Mississippi 800 miles away at school, so I have basically no contact with the harvesting experience save these pictures.

It also doesn't help that my parents kept so little (gave a lot to friends and family), which is fine, but the little that they kept was mostly cooked unripe as boiled banana in stews and such so I have no idea how "sweet" they taste.

You've made some pretty good points though, and that last picture with the Ice Cream is certainly greener than mine looked in the sink, so I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibility

Lastly, are Bluggoes more of a starchy cooking banana or do they still sweeten dessert-style when ripening? And what is the normal amount of fingers for Ice Creams to bear? This plant had about 70 bananas.

Although this mat has put out its second flower already (less than a year from the first I think), it's incredibly crowded over there since my bananas went haywire while I was away so I don't think I'll get much out of it. Will have to do a large scale clearing project before I go back.

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Iunepeace

I forgot to add in my last post that the reason I hesitate to say they're Ice Cream (besides not tasting them ripe) is because the Ice Cream bananas that I've seen REALLY look like Ice Creams lol. Here's a photo of a bunch from the mat of a lady I know:





It'd be pretty easy to identify something like that

Is there any variety that looks pretty much identical to the Ice Cream minus the blue tinting? Again thanks for the helpfulness.

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Nicolas Naranja

I wouldn't rule out ice cream, or perhaps the variety that is sold in most of the US as Ice Cream.

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PR-Giants

I don't grow Orinoco or Blue Java, but from photos I've seen the shape of the pedicles seem different.
There's probably a member here that has grown these cultivars and would know if they have purple pedicles.

I do remember reading this and just assumed it was accurate and maybe the Bluggoe subgroup also has purple pedicles.

It would be interesting to see a list of cultivars with purple pedicles.

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robguz24

Well the Silver Bluggoe looks pretty much like a less blue Ice Cream. That picture shows them more blue than mine.

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Iunepeace

Update: I'm finally back in the summer from college and have been doing some more banana research while I'm getting my garden and bananas back into gear. Venturabananas commented on a post a couple years ago by a grower who thought he had IC but turned out to be Namwah. Apparently Namwah has purplish coloring where the fingers connect to the stalk? If so this is probably a Namwah (or Silver Bluggoe) and not an Ice Cream since some of the flowering pictures definitely show a purplish connection to the stalk. Thanks for the help everyone

I'll link the thread I read about the purplish connection in:

Ice Cream ‘Blue java’ flag leaf... In zone 7b!!!!

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