delonix87

I have some 'Williams' Cavendish plants growing. They have a fairly tight clump and reach about 3m tall. I recently got suckers from someone else's Cavendish and they were far taller (5-6m) and although they had the same cavendish style - tight wide foliage , looked like another variety. Yesterday I got some suckers from the local Tongan church and these look even more different still - Shorter and clumps tend to be tight at base but stems tend to grow almost vertically. Ive posted a few pics of these short plants (admittedly not very clear ones). So Im just wondering how many 'Cavendish' types are there and if anyone has photos?
Thank you

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Darkman

I'm sorry I don't know that answer but I thought it was a good question. I do know there care at least three varieties including the Dwarf Cavedish (DC) and the Super (SDC).

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Darkman in Pensacola

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delonix87

There is, according to some sources, Williams Cavendish, Williams Super Cavendish, Dwarf Cav; Super Dwarf Cav...

edwmax

Also, Grand Nain, Robusta and Masak Hijau.

You might also take a look at the 'list of banana' which gives the different sub-groups of the AAA cultivar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...vars#AAA_Group

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Gabe15

It's not really possible to say exactly how many Cavendish cultivars there are, and it gets complex as what exactly defines a unique cultivar is a grey zone sometimes due to a number of different factors.

There are many proprietary clonal selections from tissue culture (often referred to as somaclonal mutants or "somaclones"), but far less true landrace cultivars. I would hazard to guess if you scoured the world for every single unique Cavendish cone including commercial somaclones, you could easily get into the 100-200 range or more, but in reality many are not available anywhere and are just held in private corporate or research collections. If you were to just look at traditional landrace clones, I don't know that number either and I am confident there are many uncollected clones still, but perhaps it could be somewhere closer to the 20-50 range.

The differences between them are mostly in height and plant stature, but selections exist for variability in disease resistance (particularly to Panama Wilt), fruit shape, and post harvest characteristics. Variability also exist in some minor floral characteristics such as bract and flower persistence, and also in odd horticultural traits such as multiple inflorescences (as exemplified by the common 'Double Cavendish') or foliar variegation.

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.