Hammocked Banana

....or apparently you're doing things all right!

PR-Giants

...it depends on what you're trying to do.

If you wanted to produce hundreds of pups from a single plant, it's quicker and easier to do with water suckers.

If you wanted to walk across a Continent or paddle across an Ocean then a sword sucker would be better.



What's great about water pups is that you can create as many as you want, here's a 5 pup litter I made.

And the single connection point to the mother plant for all 5 pups is smaller than a dime.

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With so many members growing tetraploids when I ran across a water sucker I made sure to save it. This past week it put up it's paddle leaf so we should know soon if this one bears fruit.

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3 Hands so far...

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WoW top hand about 30 fingers... this bunch is going way over 100 pounds.

Water pups are kinda like shelter puppies, provide them a home and care, they'll aim to please.

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13 hands so far

For members that have difficulties counting here's an easy tip.

Start at the bract where the next hand should be, that will be zero.

Hands are aligned in three parallel spirals so it is only necessary to count one of the spirals

So starting at zero go up one level and move a little to the left, that will be three, one for each spiral.

The next will be six then nine and twelve.

In the photo you can be sure of twelve hands but are unable to see the top had which is not in view and in this case makes thirteen.

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A common way of increasing yield is to use offshoots from highly productive plants so if there are any members that are interested in a sword pup from this highly productive giant water sucker banana plant I can do some type of contest and give away a free sword pup.

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14 hands

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Danounet

What kind of Banana is that?

nice bunch

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Dwarf Orinoco
Gran Nain
Manzano
Goldfinger (FHIA-01)
Dwarf Red
Mona Lisa (FHIA-02)
Sweetheart (FHIA-03)

PR Common Dwarf Plantain
Unknown Plantain?

aruzinsky

True, but there is a phenomenon called "epigenetics" that could explain long term differences between water and sword suckers. See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

I only mention this because it contradicts common sense.

venturabananas

Good point. But from everything I've read and seen, that is not the case with water suckers -- plants propagated from them eventually do just as well, though it might take until the next ratoon until any initial differences disappear.

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Tytaylor77

I have noticed no difference. If there is a genetic change in the clone then why does the water sucker grow up to produce sword suckers? Wouldn't it's DNA be changed and make all water suckers?

I agree water suckers grow way slower than swords but end up being a good plant. I only get water suckers from very young plants and under fertilized plants.

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150+ Varieties!!. See profile for list. Help me add more!

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Akula

Do suckers (water or sword) inherit the root structure of the parent if not separated from the parent and the parent Pstem dies after fruiting?

Richard

As I've said several times in this thread, "water suckers" are the result of horticulture practice and have no bearing on the quality of the plant. Instead, they represent poor practices of the gardener.

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aruzinsky

If the aforementioned "poor practices" produce equal "quality of the plant," why are they poor?

venturabananas

From what I've seen in digging plants up, no, not really, at least once the sucker is an adult size plant. Prior to that, yes, the suckers are getting nutrients and water from the mother corm, plus their own roots. Maybe someone with more formal training on how banana plants work could chime in, like Gabe. By the time a sucker is approaching fruiting size, often the mother corm it is attached to is already dead or dying.

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venturabananas

In short, a banana mat that is not growing well will produce more water suckers than will one that is growing well. On mats that are growing well, you seldom see water suckers, and those are usually on small bits of corm that somehow got isolated from the rest of the corm and root system -- e.g., by removing pups in between the main portion of the plant and a small piece of corm beyond it.

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aruzinsky

Is the total number of suckers affected? If the growing practice that causes water suckers produces more suckers than the practice that produces sword suckers and the objective is to reproduce as many plants as possible, then the prior growing practice is preferable.