Simply Bananas

This seems to only happen after hard winters and dry springs.
I usually trim a foot off the top of the plants just to get rid of dead leaves and any mush that is present. One new leaf will push out. In the case of this 7' Ice cream, it was just 4-5 inches:


sometimes the leaf will grow out 3 feet like this from a 12' Saba:


They can sit this way for weeks at a time. The leaf will be green and look a normal color. After 3 weeks of no growth and no rain, I cut the plant 3 feed lower and found rot and much and that familiar rotten smell. I continued to cut and never found any live growth. There is less than a foot of stump now.

With some force I was able to dislodge the large Saba leaf from a tight p-stem.


I am not sure what causes leaves to get stuck and then kill the p-stem. I can make an educated guess. Banana leaves have a natural groove or sulcus which traps rain or a dew. Water trapped from most of the leaves rolls off the leaves into the groove and back toward the p-stem and down to the base of the plant creating a natural watering mechanism.


The winters here kill off the leaves. The top leaves seem to dry and and can cause some constriction. There are no leaves to drain dew during dry spells to keep the p stem from tightening. The constriction seems to stop the growth.

The green color of the leaves can trick me into thinking all is well only to later discover otherwise.

Has anyone else suffered through this?

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ArchAngeL01

i hope it dosent happen to me too simply bananas!

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Brad

just j

it happens to me every year on my orinocos i just cut them down about 6-12 inches like u did and they seem to do fine after that