Botanical_Bryce

Read several times Texas Star and Dwarf Orinoco are the same thing but besides saying they are the same I can't find good fruit pictures to compare. All information is just copy and pasted from one site to another or sexual innuendos with some sort of banana. Would like to know if anyone can show the 2 as same or different.

siege2050

You must have come across the Ty Ty videos lol. Cant help you for certain but I bet its an Orinoco. If it has the name of a state in its title like several others, I doubt its real.

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Botanical_Bryce

My thoughts exactly.

siege2050

If you want to grow them for cold hardiness I can say Orinoco is very cold hardy and easy to grow. I even get bananas off of them up here in the north. I am going to test them this coming winter outdoors with heavy mulch as they are supposedly hardy to zone 7b. I had them in my unheated greenhouse a couple of winters back and with a couple of degrees under 32F I did not see much damage.

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Botanical_Bryce

I dug up a couple little bananas under an oak tree and planted them in a pit of charcoal. They grew large quickly and did good in the cold. Not much damage. I found out they are orinoco so I got the dwarf. When I got the dwarf I got the Texas Star. Now I hear they are the same.

Richard

About 2 decades ago someone in Texas grew an unknown cultivar (likely Orinoco) and had success in zone 9. Given the enthusiasm of others, they decided to start selling pups on usenet under the name Texas Star. However, they vanished around the turn of the century. The name however did not disappear from lists of cool-tolerant bananas. Enterprising marketers from a few internet nurseries got hold of the name about 7 years ago and began selling Orinoco with that label.

This kind of story is very common in horticulture and many of us here can tell similar stories particular to bananas.

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Kat2

If only it were limited to bananas...

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siege2050

I kinda had a feeling that was the case, using the name of a rarer type for plain Orinocos.

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Richard

I have grown Orinoco -- a dwarfish cultivar to fruit 3 times at my previous home in USDA zone 9b. The other fruits there (Namwa, Brazilian, Manzano) were superior in performance and time-to-ripen. However, the Orinocos: after fruiting in summer and hanging on through the winter to be picked about April or May, then hung in the garage for awhile until nearly black -- were as good as store bought platanos in San Diego left to ripen for dessert stage. The period in which they were ripe for eating was perhaps 5-10 days. The taste was very good. So IF I could only grow Orinoco for fruit, I would certainly do it.

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siege2050

I threw my green fruit in fall on a pile of leaves and they ripened after a night down into the twenties lol. I was a bit surprised.

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Botanical_Bryce

At this point I am beginning to believe that the name Texas Star is just a catchy name used for Orinoco and Dwarf Orinoco. Even still I am going to grow them sorta side by side and compare.

Tytaylor77

Keep us updated. I can't wait to see if there is any difference. Would love to see Cali gold next to Orinoco and TS too.

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Botanical_Bryce

I'll probably start taking pictures in April.

Gabe15

Theoretically, if the main difference is cold hardiness, or quickness of fruiting or something like that, you wouldn't necessarily see any morphological differences between the two plants, and the real difference may only be detectable under specific circumstances.

That being said, I think 'Texas Star' is just a marketing gimmick and there is nothing special about it. 'California Gold' seems to possibly have some more legitimacy to it's claims, but again you're unlikely to see any morphological differences between the two, and if you don't have any issues growing normal 'Dwarf Orinoco', then perhaps the differences would not be detectable in that environment.

Many years ago I sent a 'California Gold' to my friends at Going Bananas Nursery to grow out, Don reported it to be identical in morphology to his 'Dwarf Orinoco', but south Florida is not a very good place to test for special cold hardiness, so the real difference may be masked, if there is one at all.

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Botanical_Bryce

Good thoughts.

Botanical_Bryce

I saw one site selling regular orinoco as Texas Star.