Bananas_are_awesome

Hello everybody,

I am new here.

So I have had bananas in my garden for 4 years now, they were sold to me as Musa basjoo from a nursery.
Since winter here usually kills them or at least causes severe damage I usually cut them off in the spring and let them start again from the ground.

Last winter was mild and frost damage was minor and only on the leaves. I let the bananas from last year stand- and now I have the first flower.

I am really excited about this flower, it made me very happy.
And I obviously would like to see the fruit it makes.

I spent yesterday googling very much to find answers to quite some questions and didn`t find good information. Instead I found this forum.
And since this forum didn`t let me silent read for as many threads as I`d had liked but forced me to register I thought that ok, then at least I can ask banana enthusiasts directly- they will know.

so.
1) what pollinates musa basjoo in the natural habitat? I found one paper mentioning M. basjoo in only one sentence and it was mentioned together with fruit bats?

2) will I get banana fruit without having the right fruit bats, meaning, without pollination?

3) will I get seed without pollination?

4) do I have to perform pollination with a paintbrush and if so, is the banana self-fertile?
I have 1 flower only and my whole banana patch is genetically 1 plant, they are all pups from the original one. (I did buy 2 original ones, but since it is so easy to grow them from pups I have the suspician that genetically they are the same even if they came in two pots- secrets that only the nursery overseas will know and people who are so fortunate to have access to laboritary testing)


5) Even if they are small and (hopefully) full of seed- can you still eat them? Internet claims they are a delicacy where the banana comes from but I could not find any recipes mentioning musa basjoo.


Awesome forum btw! I read as much as I could without registering and liked it a lot!

It would be great if you could help me satisfy my curiosity about Musa basjoo fruiting! Thanks for your time!


(edited to add: how did the dancing banana end up in the title? I wanted it as a happy dancing good bye under this long post...)

Bananas_are_awesome

I guess time will tell what bananas I get and maybe I stumble upon the information I lack somewhere else.

92 reads- no answer.

Backyard Banana Joe

Sorry about that- sometimes it takes awhile for someone’s to respond. If you want to add dancing nanners in your post use the ones on the right > I don’t know if seeded bananas need pollination but I know that non seeded don’t
I don’t think they do........ I was at Leu gardens the other day and noticed some musa basjoo with a ripe fruit. They were very small, I think because they ripened over the winter. Anyway, I didn’t check for seeds but they probably weren’t pollinated. Sorry for the lame reply........

edwmax

Most 'dessert' (that is eatable type) bananas are propagated by division; are sterile and seedless. Seeded type bananas are considered to be ornamental. I don't grow Basjo, but I believe it is seeded. Germination is very long and the success rate is low. Thus propagation by division of the pups from the mother plant. There are a few wild type bananas that do not produce pups and do rely on seeds.


If you are looking to buy banana seeds from the internet, ... DON'T ... You need very fresh seeds and it has been proven that many of the banana seed sellers do not actually furnish real banana seed much less the specific variety you wont. So reliable seed seller for bananas are rare.



I suspect one reason no one has replied to your above question, if you have done your internet search & homework, you should have already found this info. ... There is an entire section of the forum on banana propagation.

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Bananas_are_awesome

This is what I indeed tried to find information about.
I did come across these mantras repeated everywhere: "Edible bananas do not need pollination and will make banana fruit without pollination and they are sterile".
Funnily I never found a list of species and varieties that are considered edible in the same context. What I did find is that all bananas are edible in the sense that none of them kills you or makes you sick. Just some banana fruit are not palatable. And many plant profiles about Musa basjoo also claim it is eaten where it originates. So it didn`t help to establish what my Musa basjoo gets counted as.

I am a total layman who has no idea about nothing at all.
But I figured that mankind has bred by selection since the dawn of agriculture. Our big fat juicy apples once were teensy tiny fibrous. Our cereals once were grass seed like any other. Wild pumpkins even were toxic before, now yummy.

So I thought "ok, so maybe mankind meddled and selected edible banana to become bigger and sweeter and seedless..."
So if Cavendish doesn`t make seed anymore- to me it looked like a trait that was desired and selected for. Like we made seedless watermelons, too. And nobody cares about sterility and if all Cavendish in the whole world being clones, it even is desired. That way all bananas look perfectly the same, too. (but it would have been fun to see what happens with sexual reproduction and resistency to sicknesses and so on, alas nope).

But I don`t know where does that leaves my Musa basjoo. Many plants in nature have both ways, vegetative and sexual reproduction. It is not either one or the other.


Actually, no. I wasn`t planning on buying seed. I wondered if I would get seed from my own bananas for propagation of my own bananas. Freshness would not have been an issue.

My bananas do make more pups than I can wish for.
But to my (limited layman) knowledge vegetative reproduction clones the motherplant and you get the same genetic makeup once again. Sexual reproduction offers a new mix.

Usually with other plants, like herbacious perennials, I try to propagate from seed because I find that the second or third generation is lot better adapted to the circumstances of my specific garden soil/light/climate than the original plant I bought from the nursery.
So the whole idea of maybe propagating Musa basjoo from seed is only interesting to me if I could use seed from my own bananas, the plant that now has survived 4 years in this climate.



Another reason for my questions in my original post is really just curiosity. I like to know stuff about the plants I grow. And I am a layman and I never studied botany. Maybe for someone who did study botany it is obvious, for me it isn`t. I still wonder if Musa basjoo is self-fertile or not and if I could get viable seed from 1 flower. Even if I don`t try to grow them from seed I would wanna know. Just because.


I did use the search function on this forum and searched for pollination. I don`t need to read about growing Musa basjoo from seed before I know I can expect to get some that are viable.
I spent quite some time on this forum actually and still didn`t find more than the mantra above: edible bananas make bananas without pollination and growing bananas from seed is tricky and don`t bother, use pups.
Neither answers my questions to the extend I feel is needed to say "ok, I know a bit more about what I grow in my garden".

edwmax

Then you already knew the answers before asking. ... The reason the bananas we eat (Dessert types commercially grown) do not have seeds & sterile is because they are Triploid. That is, they have an odd number of chromosome sets. Three in this case. ... But this doesn't mean they are not useful in genetic cross breeding. I'm not going deeper into this. You can google it and read it.


When I said use the search function, I meant search the internet not just this forum. Pro-Musa website has a lot of info on bananas and different types/varieties. ... This forum has a section just for propagation of bananas. You may get better response posting there as some forum members get specific notice of questions posted there.


You already know more than many members of this forum. But that is not to despair our members. Most members of this section of the forum is only interested in growing a tropical plants (bananas) in sub-tropical & cold growing zones and enjoy their rewards by eating the fruit of their labors.

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