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caliboy1994

Is the fruit thin-skinned? If it is, it just might be regular DC.

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brod

A photo of the entire plant would help with it's ID

venturabananas

What about the leaves and other characteristics makes you conclude it isn't Dwarf Cavendish? I don't see anything in these photos that rules it out. But it is my understanding that even Cavendish experts have a hard time telling the different cultivars apart.

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Narnia

[quote=PR-Giants;210153]In 1997 a neighbor gave me this banana .

It looks like a DC - may be its super healthy because the soil is suits well?
It looks better than the DC's we have. Have you added any fert. ?

caliboy1994

You should have left the male bud on. That would have made it a whole lot easier.

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venturabananas

Well, there aren't many Cavendish varieties that consistently fruit at 6' other than Dwarf Cavendish. Double ("Mahoi") is that height, too, but it is just a mutant DC that often produces double bunches, which you would have seen by now. There are some other short ones like Zan Moreno, but I think there is debate as to whether they really are different from DC, or just the same plant under a different name.

It's also possible that it is a dwarf Gros Michel cultivar, like the Highgate pictured here with Gabe. But I don't think there are any known Gros Michel cultivars that consistently fruit as short as 6'.
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If I was forced to give my best guess as to what it is, I'd still say Dwarf Cavendish, but it could be something else. Even a new mutant of a Cavendish or Gros Michel cultivar. If you take very detailed photos of the entire plant, new flowers, etc., a real expert (i.e., not me) might be able to make a definitive ID, but maybe not.

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venturabananas

If you have found a Gros Michel cultivar that consistently fruits at 6', that is awesome!

There is some information about leaf length to leaf width ratios in the MGIS database. Petiole length is another indicator of dwarfism, and your plant is definitely a dwarf by that standard.

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venturabananas

Yours is definitely a dwarf. There is a suite of traits that define dwarfism in bananas including height, pseudostem proportions, relative leaf width, and relative petiole length. Dwarf varieties are shorter than the parent variety, have proportionally thicker pseudostems, proportionally broader leaves, and proportionally shorter petioles. Note that all of these traits are measured as proportions or in comparison to the non-dwarf parent variety. In other words, the pseudostem of your banana may not be super thick, but it is thicker in proportion to its height than would be the pseudostem of a normal Gros Michel. The petioles on your plant are a dead giveaway that it is a dwarf: they are very short, much shorter (proportionally or otherwise) than those of a non-dwarf Gros Michel. Dwarf varieties also usually have more retained "floral relicts" on the rachis than the parent non-dwarf variety.

Comparing Dwarf Brazilian with regular ("tall") Brazilian illustrates these traits. Even though Dwarf Brazilian is very tall by dwarf banana standards, it is shorter than the regular variety, which has a more slender appearance, longer petioles and leaf blades, and a "clean" rachis.

Dwarf Brazilian (I chose a photo of some that are quite tall to show that you can still see the dwarf traits even though these plants are relatively tall.)
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Brazilian
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A mutant is an individual that has a different gene (or set of genes) from the equivalent gene in the parent. In other words, something has changed the DNA. Mutations can be induced by exposure to radiation, amongst other things. Genetic mutation is always naturally occurring at some relatively low rate. In the case of dwarf banana varieties, a gene that controls height (and some other characteristics) mutates in a cell that eventually produces the new mutant pup. As a result, that pup and pups it produces will be dwarves, provided another mutation back to the original condition doesn't occur.

Leaf measurements are usually made on "leaf III", which is the 3rd to last leaf produced before the bunch emerged, i.e., not the flag leaf, not the "pre-flag leaf", but the one before the pre-flag leaf.

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venturabananas

From what I've read, the only reliable way to distinguish Cavendish from Gros Michel varieties is the color of the female flowers. In short, you probably can't figure it out from looking at the suckers.

According to Kepler and Rust, Gros Michel female flowers have two red-brown stripes on the upper petal ("compound tepal"), whereas Cavendish lack these stripes. Also, the stigma is brown in Gros Michel and yellow in Cavendish; and the style is white in Gros Michel and bright pink in Cavendish.

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venturabananas

The flowers look somewhere between Gros Michel and Cavendish, compared to the photos in the book I have. I know that's not very helpful, but that's how it looks.

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venturabananas

Well I'm hoping Gabe will chime in, but I haven't seen anything yet that absolutely rules out Dwarf Cavendish or Highgate. For example, the leaf ratio is only one trait used to to define a dwarf banana. Look at the photo of Gabe with the Highgate. That plant does not have a leaf ratio <2.5, which is the generally used cutoff for a dwarf. In fact, when I looked up leaf ratio for Highgate, I found values as high as 2.75, and it wouldn't surprise me if the one in Gabe's photo was even higher. And Highgate averages around 9' tall. Yet it is considered a dwarf variety. (BTW, I also found values for Dwarf Cavendish as high as 2.4.)

If your plant consistently fruits at 6 - 6.5' and it has short petioles as shown in your photos, it is some kind of dwarf.

BTW, leaf ratio is just the ratio of the blade length to the blade width. Out of curiosity, did you exclude the petiole and only measure the blade for length?

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Nicolas Naranja

Just a guess

Guineo Enano

TARS 17426 - Musa acuminata - Guineo Enano - Florida, United States

If it is a gros michel It could be "lowgate" which is short.

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venturabananas

I had assumed that was just another name for Dwarf Cavendish, but I have no basis for that assumption other than it seemed so similar to DC.

They have so many interesting names on their list that you don't see anywhere else. I wonder how many are just different names for the same thing.

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Yug

I've got a GM 'Cocos' and a Double Mahoi (a mutated DC). Yours looks like a DC to me, but then I'm no expert.

I took note of the petiole length in one of the photos, and it is undoubtedly a dwarf of some sort.

Nicolas Naranja

Well, you have plants that get selected over a few hundred years. I am sure that the chinese had several different selections of Cavendish bananas. There are hundreds of different types of plantains. I think I had read somewhere that the genetic basis for dwarfism in Musa had something to do with Giberellic acid sensitivity.

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Gabe15

It is not a Gros Michel of any type, it is Cavendish. It does not look like 'Dwarf Cavendish', but rather one of the shorter "tall" cultivars, such as 'Williams', but too hard to say for sure without the male bud. There are also taller "dwarf" cultivars such as 'Grand Nain', but to tell these apart you need to have the male bud intact. In Cavendish and in some other subgroups (notably Pome), dwarfs tend to have partially or totally persistent dry bracts and male flowers on the rachis, whereas talls tend to be clean, so without the male bud it is too hard to say which Cavendish cultivar it might be or might be closest to. There are many different Cavendish cultivars however (since it is so widely grown there are many somatic mutations out there), but even telling them apart by the experts can be very difficult without evaluating all of them side by side for a few years.

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Nicolas Naranja

That FAO link was good, but I may have to break out the biochemistry book to understand what is going on.

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Nicolas Naranja

Apparently there are multiple pathways to get to dwarfism. I'd like to have a dwarf Hua Moa, and as many as I have, I may actually find one.

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