japanese basjoo
 

Have a look on the pics of japaneses basjoos ...The bud has a strange look (not very sharp) is it un underspecies?

Musaceae

Re: japanese basjoo
 

Bon jour Ivan,
Nothing wrong with the bud shape of the Basjoo. It is quite normal.
There are several types in Japan under the name of "Basjoo", one is dwarf
type of 2 meters in height, the other is tall type of say 4~5 meter high, and
the shape of the bud is sharp type and the round type exactly like the photo.
Only the common things for all the types are that there are no wax powder
like material on the surface of the petioles and the pseudostem and the color
of the bud is yellowish green or yellowish brown like the bud of the picture
shows.

Re: japanese basjoo
 

Hi Asacomm,
In the UK we have the short form and the tall form too, does the short form produce lots of pups?
The tall form is said to produce very few pups in comparison and the pups can be some distance from the P-stem, Unlike the short form were the pups are close and numerous

Thanks,
Tony

Re: japanese basjoo
 

In China M. basjoo is varying quite a lot depending on its growing conditions. The small ones are from lower elevation and the bigger ones from higher elevations. The suckering habits are more or less what Tony is saying. By the way, there are several studies on M. basjoo in Japan about its cold tolerant, etc.
Markku.

Re: japanese basjoo
 

Hi,
Does you M.basjoo producing seeds normally? I have some reports from Japan that some do and some not.
Markku.

Re: japanese basjoo
 

Hello Tony,
Yes, the dwarf type produces a lot of pups and the I think the toll type
also produces pups nearby the pseudostem too.

Hello Markku,
No, our basjoo rarely produces seeds as it is very dificult to perform natural
pollination, and hand pollination is necessary to produce seeds.

Re: japanese basjoo
 

Here in France we use to say that most of basjoos cannot produce seeds because they are of Tc..A friend of me has an ancient clump of basjoo(in my area basjoos are grown since about a century and las year visiting his garden we found some bananas with seeds ;i tried to germinate them but with no success.My friend gave me a pup so i\'ll see in the future what could be done with it...


here are the seeds(but the banana was unripen)

Re: japanese basjoo
 

I am not familiar with the Japanese Basjoo. If you lived in Hilo, the local folks would tell you to immediately feed the flowering banans with a KMag 0-0-22 fertilizer. KMag of course is Potasium, Magnesium. It feel to me like an eternity to wait for the bananas to set and then ripen to a point of collection. I just harvested a bunch of Cuban Reds. I watched them for months and months...going to the plant several times a day. The wait was worth it...be patient.

DOMinPuna

Re: japanese basjoo
 

Hi Ivan,
I have seen pictures of underdeveloped seeds on Basjoo on a few occasions before,
In Europe and the US.
It could be that on rare occasions basjoo can produce seeds without pollination! It’s a strange phenomenon but some times sterile edible bananas can produce seeds too.

As far as tissue cultured plants been sterile, I can accept that’s possible for some but not all t.c. Basjoo.
Musa basjoo has been around for at least 120 years in Europe, rumours about them not been able to produce seeds started long before tissue culture and t.c. Basjoo has only been around for the last 15/20 years to feed the rise in popularity in exotic gardening.
Although provenance is often hard to prove we do appear to have a good selection genetic diversity in basjoo with material coming from Japan and china.

A big part of the problem could be basjoo produces the male flowers after the female flowers are spent, so avoiding self pollination, that cant be the sole reason though, you do see large old mats of basjoo in the UK and France and they have never produced seed like they do in the wild!
I have yet to see a picture of a basjoo in some ones garden with a full set of seed baring hands… that’s one that hasn’t been hand pollinated.
So I think whatever pollinates basjoo in China we don’t have it.

Tony

Re: japanese basjoo
 

In fact the only problem is to have two flowers at the same time ,one flower polinating the other ...In my area it's rather easy to find two flowers at the same time..;I've heard somewhere that i f you want seeds on basjoos you have to grow 2 different clumps of basjoos ,do'nt know the reality of this...

Re: japanese basjoo
 

I've had mine flower once, in 2006. I checked for seeds but there were none. I really wanted some seeds off of it so I made a point of looking for them, but I couldn't find one single seed.

Re: japanese basjoo
 

You can see here what is the shape of basjoo's bananas when they are pollinated...

Re: japanese basjoo
 

The question is to solve why some of the M.basjoo clones are sterile. It is the same in Japan. Even with hand pollination in they do not produce seeds. So it is not a question of pollinators. However, some clones (not TC cultured) produce seeds normally outside of China.
Markku.

Re: japanese basjoo
 

There seems to be two threads about basjoo running right now that have very similar topics! Anyway I did forget to mention, and this has been brought up in the other thread too, the flowering height and suckering habit of my basjoo. I do not know if it was TC'd originally or what. But I have noticed two things on its sucking. One is that some of the suckers will appear as far away as 12 to 18 inches away from what I THINK is the mother plant. I say that because the clump is over 10 years old now and I'm not always sure where the suckers are coming from. But just 3 or 4 weeks ago I noticed a new one that is a good foot away from the neareast pseudostem. But I have a very large pseudostem that I think will flower next year (it has the age and size) if it makes it through the winter (keep your fingers crossed for me!). What this one just did recently was put out 3 NEW suckers all within 4 inches and less of the mother plant. This makes me think that it will flower next year. My point is the whole clump is producing 2 different types of suckers, ones closest to the pseudostem are an indication it will flower soon and ones further away are new plants as the clump spreads. So I don't know if I can determine what type of basjoo this is based on suckering. That's just my experience.

Also, it appears the plant will flower at a height of 10 to 12 feet, assuming I don't cut it down at all. When it flowered for me, it was about 7 feet at the leaf axis, but I had cut it down the previous fall to about 4 feet.

Re: japanese basjoo
 

Hi Eric its difficult to tell what clone you have because when a clone is Tc'd time and time again, it can produce variations in them.

Here is a picture of the male flowers on a basjoo.



I was going to try an experiment last year that involved collecting the pollen then freezing it, I could then use the pollen when I had female flowers to pollinate.
This is a proven method with some species of plants and the pollen can remain viable for up to a year.
Unfortunately I couldn’t find any pollen so could this be a sterile clone?
Or does the pollen only remain on the flower for a very short time


Tony

Re: japanese basjoo
 

Hi,
I would like to know your observations from M. basjoo male flowers? Who has seen them with or without pollen?
Markku.

Re: japanese basjoo
 

Here are photos of M. basjoo with pollen from a mat I found in a neighborhood in West Hollywood, California. It was a short plant, only about 2m. It also looks like some of the fruits could be fertilized but it is a little difficult to tell for sure.








And also here is a photo of M. basjoo at the Fruit and Spice Park in Homestead, Florida. It has an interesting shape I have not seen in other M. basjoo, and it also very green. It was taken with my old camera which was not very high resolution so I cannot zoom in on it to observe pollen as with my other photo. If you look closely though, it appears that the anthers are white and so maybe there could be some pollen.



I have some photos as well of the tall M. basjoo at The Huntington in San Marino, California, but none are close enough to see if there is pollen present.

Re: japanese basjoo
 

Hi Gabe,
It looks like that the fruits are fertilized and the plant in the last photo has pollen too.
Now the question is that who has tried to hand pollinate with the fresh pollen and what are the results? One needs for that pollen from another plant.
Markku.