nebi

Are the leaves of bananas like dwarf namwah, ice cream and raja puri more cold hardy? Or is only the stalk more hardy while the leaves will still turn brown and into mush at around 32-34F?

Botanical_Bryce

At 32 mine often stay green. If it is long enough it can brown them. So my answer from my yard would be yes and no. I didn't lose any stalks on the varieties you mentioned even at 23 degrees for 9 hours.

bananaT

Cold hardiness is a bit of a misnomer.
Bananas don't like cold. But the more cold tolerant varieties can come out of it with less damage, and bounce back faster after dealing with the cold.
Another huge factor, that is mistaken for cold hardiness, is that bananas are really good at having that thermal mass about them. You know, they're big and full of water...... It helps them when temps are cold near the ground.
But when the fronts pass and bring cold air with clear skies(all the heat just dissipating), is when you can get some freezing that damages the leaves & moves on down the stalk if its a bad winter.

All bananas will start to get cold damage at 32 degrees, But, there are so many factors that can come into play with how well they manage. Size, micro climates, leaf numbers...

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Jose263

What they said... But frost on the leaves, at any temp, will definitely turn them brown

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meizzwang

FYI: when you increase the solute concentration inside the leaves (ie. feed them high P,K a few weeks before it goes below 70F), some varieties can get frost on their leaves with no damage, but this is very dependent upon how long the leaves are exposed to frost. Other varieties, it seems no matter what, they'll turn brown with frost on the leaves.

During some years, I've had some bananas (ie. American Goldfinger) under cold, wet weather that never got frost on the leaves, yet a large amount of the leaf mass did eventually turn brown. It took perhaps 2 months of nonstop cold rain before it started getting messed up. Good example:


And here's what they looked like before the winter: