Panaroma

Hi there,

I was wondering anyone could help me with the growing habitat of more undiscovered hardy species. I'm thinking especially about hardy balbisiana, accuminata and eventual nutural hybrids out there. I was thinking n-e India. Anyone got info or links on this one?

Greets,
Gunther, Brussels

mrbungalow

Balbisiana is just one of them, and it is spread all over the tropics and subtropics. This species' hardiness is therefore very variable. In northeastern India, along the range to bhutan you have:

Nagensium
NagensiumX (Probably balbisiana hybrid)
Flaviflora (Most northern banana, said to be closely related to acuminata)
Sikkimensis
Helen (Sikkimensis hybrid between chini champa cultivar)
Darjeeling Giant (Sikkimensis hybrid between unknown species)
Cheesmani

Erlend

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Gabe15

In Yunnan too there are many new varieties, some Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana types that are hardy, as well as many new species that are not yet described. Also there is one mysterious species known only from one single collection in Bhutan known as Musa griersonii which has potential hardy and very ornamental if anyone were to find it again (if it is not extinct hopefully).

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

bigdog

There really are loads of them, but 90% or more aren't in cultivation. I want to get ahold of Musa basjoo X itinerans. It does exist, but I don't know how to find it. Gabe? You know where to find it? M. thomsonii has been written about in some literature as being cold-hardy also, and seeds are available for it. I've got one going in the ground in the Spring.

There are also some bananas in Northern Thailand and Vietnam that grow in cool areas, and have some cold-tolerance. How much remains to be seen.

Gabe15

Musa thomsonii is native to the lowlands, so I would tend to think it does not have any special cold hardiness, but you never know until you try. As for M. basjoo x M. itinerans, yes many plants used to exist of it but I don't know if they do anymore. At the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture in Trinidad, Simmonds had a collection containing many rare wild species and test crosses, but when that program ended all of the plants were abandoned and they no longer exist. True Musa flaviflora was down there even, M. ingens was tested but died.

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

bigdog

I believe I read about that on the INIBAP website. Ken Sheperd's Cytogenetics... monograph. He also talks about Musa ochracea, an interesting species which I would like to see a picture of. He states that the seeds were so small that he didn't think they were Musa seeds. The plant has a yellow color also. Anyway...that is a very neat article to read. I still haven't read the whole thing, just pieces here and there. I wish that M. basjoo X itinerans hybrid was still around! Looks like they had sites in Trinidad, Jamaica, and Brazil up into the 1990s. Surely they didn't just destroy those plants!

http://bananas.bioversityinternation...togenetics.pdf

Tropicallvr

I thought balbisiana would be a good cold tolerant type plant also when I started sprouting what I hope would be cold hardy banana plants. Mainly because I read that the other banana in Germany that also survived besides basjoo was a balbisiana. I have since learned that the yellow stemmed balbisiana in a pain in the butt to grow in a cold climate. They tend to have trouble getting going in the spring, and somtimes also have the entire meristem rotten, while the rest of the pseudostem is still solid.
The balbisiana in Germany is(by it's looks) probally closer related to Musa Thompsonii, or Musa initerans which also can be considered balbisiana if leaf characteristics are used for identification.
There's another banana called Musa 'Tibet' which also has the balbisiana characteristics, but as far as I know it's only available in the UK through Koba Koba. It would be nice if it came across the "pond" someday.
.

Gabe15

Musa balbisiana is not a uniform species and there are many newly found undescribed varieties. And there have been found in the wild some very hardy Musa balbisiana (that grow in areas with annual snowfall). These are not yet availble for purchase and the only ones you can buy are the less hardy varieties.

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

bigdog

Does anyone know anything about the M. balbisiana 'Neue Art' offered by sunshine-seeds.com? I have sprouted several of these so far. They are vigorous little seedlings!

By contrast, I managed to get one Musa itinerans 'India Form' to sprout, but it is very slow and not vigorous at all. I wonder if it will even survive, because it only had two very tiny roots when I transplanted it into its own pot. The first leaf hasn't yet sprung from the coleoptile after a full week, but it is green, so there is hope yet.

Gabe15

Frank, if the M. itinerans ends up being the original variety (now named Musa itinerans var. itinerans) then it is the hardiest of all of the M. itinerans and should be on par or very close to M. basjoo in cold hardiness.

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

bigdog

Well, that would be great! I hope mine lives. What I don't understand is the plant that Agri-Starts is offering, and Banana-tree.com (and probably others too), and selling as the M. itinerans var. gigantea (actually var. xishuangbannaensis). I have it, and it doesn't send runners out like the other M. itinerans varieties. In fact, pups come up pretty close to the main pseudostem! It looks nothing like var. xishuangbannaensis. It's the one with the waxy, blue-green pseudostem. It still is pretty cold-hardy, but not like M. basjoo. So, is this variety still considered M. itinerans, and if so, which variety is it? I sent you one in '05, Gabe.

This one: