barna

This M. "PNG Highland" is now about 1 year old and is about 150 cm (5' ) high. The seeds arrived in EU together with M. ingens from PNG.



Some people suggested in the Trebrown Forums it could be
Musa maclayi subsp. ailuluai
Musa maclayi subsp. maclayi
Musa schizocarpa
Musa boman

But we will probably have to wait until it flowers to really know to which species it belongs.

I also have two Musa ingens sprouted a couple of month ago and I would like to share a picture with all of you.



The plants are still small (about 15 cm high) and I have been fighting :2687: with fungus during they early stages (look at th old leaves ¡¡) but finally they seem OK

Does somedody has also any of this two species?. Any advice?

Please, keep you finger crossed.

aroidgrower

I have seeds of Ingens but have not had any luck getting a single one to germinate. I have germinated banana seeds before did you do anything special to them?

I would love to grow this species and have around 100 seeds planted but not a single start.

bigdog

Very nice! Like so many others, I too have tried M. ingens seeds with no luck. So, you are the guy from Spain that sprouted two of them! And it took over a year? Alternating temps? What temps?

That 'PNG Highlands' banana looks really nice also. That would be pretty cool to see it flower, especially if it is Musa maclayi. They get over 30 feet tall, and the bloom and fruits are upright like M. velutina (except on a much larger scale)!

Thanks so much for posting those pics!

Gabe15

I have one of the 'PNG Highland' and it has been difficult to grow, it seems to like cool temperatures (makes sense for a highland species). It is now held at the Denver Botanic Gardens and is still quite a small plant but I think it will do well, and perhaps in a year or so it will be a nice sized plant. I have been trying to figure out what species it is but it is so hard to tell without a flower. I am leaning towards M. boman because it was told to me that it highly resembles M ingens (but of course the seeds are different). I don't know how you could confuse M. ingens and M. maclayi (or any erect species for that matter), but M. boman and M. ingens do highly resemble each other. M. schizocarpa is also very distinct (with green buds) and I don't see how it could be confused with M. ingens, also I do not believe it to grow in the highlands.

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MediaHound

Thanks for sharing these pics!
Do you think we should start a page in the wiki for "PNG Highlands"?


Here's some other relevant pages in the wiki:
http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Musa_Ingens
http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Musa_boman
http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Musa_Maclayi
http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Musa_schizocarpa

mrbungalow

Barna, if that's really a Musa Ingens try to keep it cool (below 20 degrees C) at night. I am not talking from experience here, but from what I have read. I heard of someone, somewhere having to keep them in an airconditioned house during the nights!

Best of luck

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barna

I used three different methods for trying to sprout these seeds.

I put some seeds in a sealed Zip plastic bag with a humid paper towel in an polystyrene reptiles incubator at 28º C and connected to a timer. 12h per day

Some other were planted using the Mrbungalow's system (What seeds have germinated for you?) with the Reptile heating mat, el. timer, and plastic boxes with lids.




12h per day at 25-30ºC and the rest at room temperature (variable from 12-17ºC)

And the third system I used is a plastic propagator with turf cubes inside…and heated also with reptile heating mat in the same time and similar temperatures The two M. ingens I have, both sprouted from this last system



As subtract for the two last, I used a mixture of 1/3 perlite and 2/3 Compo © semilleros (seedlings)

Christian from banana swap is trying to positive identify the seedlings as M. ingens, Of course there is a small possibility I mislabeled them and they are in fact the PNG Highland. I will keep you informed.

I have not had any particular problem on growing the PNG Highland but the M, ingens needed more control an treatment as they showed initially a fungus disease.

I keep M. ingens them all outside in a semi-sheltered position were they get only the early morning sun and the were the temperature range from 30ºC during day to 16-17ºC during night.

Humidity is the only parameter difficult to control as it change a lot depending on the winds.

Thank you Erlend for your recommendation I will check night temperature staying below 20ºC

Here you have some more pictures







I will keep you informed

Christian

The unknown PNG species is without any doubt Musa maclayi ssp. maclayi var. maclayi.

I received them together with the Musa ingens seed from PNG, but hesitated to distribute them trough my Bananaswap site because at the time they were 'unknown'. Germination was by far easier then Musa ingens seeds, and I ended up with a few plants. Once the biggest one reached a good size for identification, I managed to get to the bottom of this mystery with the aid of the most recent publication on the wild banana species in PNG - Argent in the Notes of the Royal Botanical Garden Edinborough magazine (somewhen in the 70th). All known PNG species are described in great details.

Identification turned out very easy, as the very distinct features allowed to swiftly follow through all identification approaches published in the article.

Identification approaches were:
- Quick identification guide based on vegetative features
- shape of petiole cross-section
- shape and orientation of the leaf base
- Full textual description of vegetative features
Identification based on seed description prooved inconclusive, as to be quite frank the publication was not written to allow identification by seed alone, so this went bejond the scope of the publication.

Thanks to Argent, vegetative features are sufficient for most identification tasks, and seeing the flower is not a requirement for identification. He followed through both approaches, and I am grateful for this. Thank you Argent!!

The above steps proved that the plant is Musa maclayi. There are several subspecies and varieties. Based on the identification guides and full textual descriptions provided, the sub-species could be identified as Musa maclayi ssp. maclayi. The variety could not be identified without doubt based on vegetative features alone, for this floral characteristics would have to be considered. Nevertheless the habitats of the varieties are so distinct, that the variety can be identified based on location of collection. Location of collection is the PNG mainland. The other species are only to be found on very remote islands.

While talking about plant identification, a quick note on Musa ingens identification: There are two features that make this plant very unique in the context of all the other wild PNG species:
a) the seed size
b) the strongly revolute shoulders.

No other banana seeds from PNG are within the same size bracket - all other Musa seeds are smaller, only the only PNG endemic Ensete species is bigger.

I have never seen a banana plant with such strongly revolute shoulder! (Ok, Ok, I admit I don't know them all... :-) For those who don't know the term 'shoulder', it is the part of the petiole that surrounds the pseudostem at the point where the leaves emerge. In the case of Musa ingens it is rolling back outwards onto itself.

I hope this has cleared up some confusion.

Christian

barna

We were discussing today with Christian if my "little jewels" are or not M. ingens.
When I get the two different types of seeds I labeled as M. ingens A and B.

I thought I had corrected all the seeds identifications and put the correct name but...
I have not a definitive identification. I will wait for a couple of weeks and see if their shoulders get strongly revolute (I will keep my fingers crossed until then)

aroidgrower

I believe I read somewhere that ingens do not sucker? Is this true if so are their other musa that do not sucker? So are seeds the only way this plant reproduces? This sounds like a it could be close in relation to the ensetes than most other musa species?

Gabe15

M. ingens definetly suckers, they are just so large that it would be hard to carry them out of the jungles, so seeds are pretty much the only option right now.

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