Musa sp. "Helen"
 

Musa sp. "helen" is a new species that has popped up on the market. It's supposed to be a cross between "chini champa" (the indian black stemmed type growing in india) and musa sikkimensis. I bought 100 seeds and gave it a try. Soaked them for 3 days. Put them on a heat mat with fluctuating temps, and went on vacation to thailand for 2 weeks.

WOW! When I came home many had sprouted. And in just 2 weeks. The small plants seem to be growing vigourously in our minimum daylight. Another curiosity is that several stems seem to be coming up from one seed. The seeds are not that big by the way, somewhere in the middle between sikkimensis and velutina. Will post photos when they look like banana-plants.

Erlend:cool:

Re: Musa sp. "Helen"
 

Vacation and new bananas! Nice.
How many hours do you have your heat mat set on "on", and off?
I just ordered some of those too.

Re: Musa sp. "Helen"
 

I keep the heat mat on for 10 hours. The room temp. is around 60 degrees. I am also trying an unknown variety from thailand that looks just like blue jawa, but these seeds have not sprouted yet.

Erlend

Re: Musa sp. "Helen"
 

Yup, it is definately the case. Several "plants" or stems are growing from a single seed. Is this normal for most bananas? :confused: Never in my growing history has this happened. Could it be it is a very vigourous cultivar? Think it will pup much as a bigger plant?

Erlend

Re: Musa sp. "Helen"
 

Hey Erlend,
That has happened a few times for me. Once with a Musa I can't remember, once with E.glaucum, and once with E.ventricosum. If I would have taken better care of them both stems probally would have survived, but usally one stem died. I bet you will be able to make both stems live if you baby them. The one that I had which both stems survived is E.ventricosum. I'm definatly saving the twins, and maybe they will bloom at the same time.
Here's a pic with a regular E.glaucum on the right, and a double E.ventricosum on the left(small at the time of pic)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...r/2Ensetes.jpg

Re: Musa sp. "Helen"
 

Oh yeah I forgot. The Musa acuminata seeds from bananatree had about 5% double sprouts, and most of them grew just fine. The M.acuminata is really surprising me being cold hardy in an unheated glass greenhouse(zone 7) as a 6 inch plant. I contacted them(bananatree) and all they knew was that they were from southern China.
I don't think being a double slows down growth at all.