bigdog

Ok, so there is what is being sold as Musa itinerans, and has been for several years now in the U.S., that looks like this:

From Agristarts.com:

And one of my pics (plant came from Agristarts):


This plant was, and still is, being advertised as growing to 38' tall or more in the wild, but it flowers at much less than that in Florida (15 feet, give or take a few feet).
Banana-tree.com sells plants of what they call Musa itinerans var. gigantea, which is now known as M. itinerans var. xishuangbannaensis. The picture on their website does match var. xishuangbannaensis, but the description of the plant doesn't! Some of it does but this part does not:

From their website:http://www.banana-tree.com/Product_D...t_ID~18962.cfm
And the picture from banana-tree.com:


I have a young var. xishuang, and I can assure you that there is no blue-green wax on the pseudostem! In fact, it is pinkish-bronze right now. Actually, it has maroon splotches, and has some yellow also.

The there is Musa 'Burmese Blue'. We now know that it has been named Musa itinerans var. guangdongensis. There are several other varieties coming to light as well. I believe this part of the thread has been covered by another previous thread, but this is what I want to know:

What is the first banana that I posted?

It isn't Musa itinerans. New pups come up directly off the corm, with no long rhizomes (as with itinerans). It forms a dense mat, which itinerans does not. Gabe and I discussed this a little. Could this be Musa yunnanensis? The description on Nature Products website certainly matches it, and so does the bloom!


What do you think?

Gabe15

I would guess it to be a Musa yunnanensis variety as Musa itinerans is a traveling banana, so that is the first thing to notice even if its not flowering. Seed dealers rarely seem to get identification right on new varieties. There are also lots of new undescribed varieties (new species and variations of previously described species) coming out of Yunnan, so who knows. When they go out and collect these plants they could be anything.

Musa itinerans var. itinerans (the original form) has whitish fruit a dark purple (solid) male bud. M. itinerans var. xishuangbannaensis seems to be very similar to var. itinerans except much larger. Other M. itinerans varieties sometimes have striations on the male bud.

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D'Andra

I'm curious, what are the odds of the seeds mutating? Is this just another example of sellers making up attractive names? Could it be that the sellers don't really know what seeds they're getting. Other than the visual, do they check the genetics?

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D'.

Gabe15

It is very unlikely seeds are "mutating" from the original wild species. What is really happening is that there are many undescribed and rather unknown to science wild banana varieties out there. When seed collectors find one they don't know the first thing they do is go to literature looking to match it up with a previously described species. This does not always work due to the fact that many of these new varieties are just that, "new", so there is not going to be any reference information on it. Sometimes instead of describing what is it, they tack on the name of the closest previously known species. So you see, many mistakes are made due to lack of knowledge on what the plants are that are actually being sold.

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The only hemp Im growing is Manila.