Randyk

Hello,

I am Randy and I live in Holland. I’m setting up a rare plant collection for a few years now, so when I move out of my smaller house and move into my dream house with a very very big garden I can set up some kind of botanical garden. Because I don’t specifically grow bananas, I will not be super active on this forum but I love to read it. That is why I am not writing a welcome post, I’d consider this as my welcome post sorry. I love to read more than write. Maybe I make a thread though about the bananas in my garden and give updates once in a while . I now have the Sikkimensis red tiger and the basjoo. I love to offer species which are very distinct. That’s how my eye fell on Itenerans.

Now in Holland we dig out the big pseudostems and mulch the ground. Than we store the big stems and after ice holy days (the day of last possible frost) we put them back in the ground. Than after a month you see pups growing out of the ground where you have dug out the bigger stems.

I love the Itenerans because of its big leaves that look very different from Basjoo. But it is so rare here. Information is really rare also. Does somebody with both speciaal know the big differences between musa itinerans var. xishuangbannaensis and var. Itinerans. Does the xishuang really get so much bigger than itinerans? And how big does itinerans get eventually? I have read 3 ,4 , 5 meter. That is quite a difference... which of the two is stronger in your experience? And which of the two is probably more suited for the life it will get as I stated above.

Hopefully someone can help me get further.

Many thanks in advance!

Sincerely
Randy

cincinnana

There are some great threads on the forum about these plants and some good takeaways too.

Use keyword Mekong Giant as a search word and then follow the many posts.
The posts are quite spread out.
Here is a thread to start....... Musa yunnanensis officially described!
Good luck in your search.
Welcome to the Jungle!!!

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Randyk

Thanks you for your reply ! I read a post that BigDog had a pseudostem of 9 feet tall and he expected it to flower the following year but i don't know if it did. That means that var. Itinerans doesn't get much higher than Basjoo? Maybe if it is placed in shade it gets higher? I'd hoped var. Itinerans got a little higher than that. But Itinerans var. Itinerans is cold hardy enough for Holland . But how about var. Xishuangbannaensis?

I have gotten a hold of some seeds of Var. Itinerans, would rather buy a pup but well, at this moment that seems impossible here. The supplier bought the seeds from Rarepalmseeds.com, anyone good succes with this supplier for bananas? Gonna do my best to germinate hem. Heat mat for sure. The soil mix I think i expirement a bit with, seed start mix, peat, vermiculite and a little bit of compost that contains a fungi that kills Sciara Analis eggs and larva.

hoping for the best .

subsonicdrone

from all the reading i did the only place to get it doesnt respond and no one else seems to have the real thing

subsonicdrone

i am growing musa balbisiana var balbisiana
bought the seed from rare palm seeds
supposed to get up to 10M pstem... if it gets huge i will be sure to post pics (edit: might be 10M total height)

subsonicdrone

i also had good luck with ensete ventricosum var large seed
with RPS it is good practice to buy from the "new" category

Randyk

Thanks you for your response! I will sure give it a try. I will update you guys!

Randyk

Sadly its just the var. Itinerans. I am afraid it doesn't differ too much from Basjoo. But at least you can grow this one happily in semi shade. Hope it will survive and grow big next year. One concern I have is that there are some Sciria Analis flies in my room from other plants. Hope they won't attack this little guy straight away when I pot it up.


In Germany there is someone where I can buy the var. Indian Form in spring. I will try this one out also. If i can find seeds of var. xishuangbannaensis or var. Indian Form, I will try them to germinate aswell.

I will post some updates .

cincinnana

Looking fine!

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cincinnana

Bump...has your plant worked?

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Randyk

Sorry for the late response my Gmail decided that bananas.org should be considered spam and I didn’t got a notification..well it isn’t anymore know.

Thanks for asking! It is growing very happily and I just recently potted him up again.It looks like he is the only one to sprout, they can surprise me ofcourse but I got a feeling the seeds were quite old. I got 60 seeds of var. India form but no sprouts yet either.. also when I track back to the last time var. India form was reasonably available, they are probably even older. But doesn’t matter I keep them in de propagator for some time, they are not standing in my way. Sometimes you get awesome surprises.

I found a propagator in Germany who sells var. Indian form so hopefully I can buy one from him this spring. Then I can test them out in my climate side by side, which hasn’t really been done properly yet as you can suspect with these reasonably unknown species.

I will try to upload a photo tomorrow of the little but getting bigger guy.

Randyk