Bananas.org - Musa basjoo

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- - Musa basjoo (http://www.bananas.org/f30/musa-basjoo-47069.html)

I know I'll have eyes rolling at the title of this but;

I'm new just joined primarily because I'm interested in bananas, but also because I have recently made a discovery.

Im an assistant gardener at a botanic gardens in the UK, and in the unheated conservatory, there are 5 stands of Musa basjoo growing, and they have been there a while.. 20 years or more.

I was maintaining the conservatory when I took a close look at the bananas themselves, and discovered they had viable seed in them. So I've sown 100 Musa basjoo seed and it will be very impressive if they germinate.

I realise finding a seeding Musa basjoo is a rarity outside of its natural habitat due to the preferred method of vegetative production of Musa basjoo for the commercial horticulture industry.

Anyway.. I've documented it.. I'll try to attach photos soon.

In terms of attempting to germinate the seeds.. I sowed them extremely fresh.. more or less straight out of the fruit within a few hours of detaching the fruit.

Ive gone about 3 methods for sowing... 50 seeds were sown in a traditional 50 cell tray with no cover on. 25 were sown in a half tray which has then been inserted inside a polythene bag. The renaining 25 were sown on paper towels which were then inserted into a ziplock freezer bag. One of these methods may work hopefully.

The interesting thing about the stands of Musa basjoo is they appear to come from different provenance to each other.. one is taller than the others and they have been cross pollinated. What has pollinated them to produce viable seed is more interesting though... the evidence is pointed towards shield bugs.

Here are some photos of the documentation of the Musa basjoo find and seed sowing. The two fruit are from the different provenance(s)

These two pictures are plants from the two different stands that managed to pollinate each other.

Very cool. I hear it happens. Rarely without trying to breed I bet. Good luck I hope some sprout! Keep us informed here!

The plants in the conservatory don't look like Musa Basjoo in my opinion; Musa Basjoos usually have different looking petioles with "wings" on the side. Also, leaves and petioles are usually wider looking and leaves tend to blend more into the petioles on M. Basjoo.
Plants on the photo look more like Musa Balbisiana at first glance.. What colour flower did the plants have? Musa Basjoo allways has a yellow flower, balbisiana and acuminata have purple/pink.

Is there any chance it could have been mislabeled when planted?

I'm afraid I'm going to have to agree with Erland, they aren't Musa Basjoo and those seeds aren't Musa Basjoo seeds. Having grown Musa Basjoo from seed myself they are not Basjoo seeds.

They look more like a Balbisiana type.

I agree they are definitely not M. bajsoo, but don't believe they are M. balbisiana.

It's hard to tell from the photos, but from the growth habit of the plants and the few blurry bunches I can see they appear to be some type of M. acuminata or a hybrid with a species like M. ornata or something closely related.

Can you post some close up photos of a fruit bunch and flowers?

I was quite excited at first actually at the prospect of someone collecting M. basjoo seed from cultivated plants. There is some evidence the commonly available clones in the horticultural trade may be sterile, which is not at all surprising if true as many are produced from tissue culture with assumably no consideration to maintaining fertility or any true-to-typeness as somaclonal mutations occur. Growing new plants from seed could give a reset of sorts to the overall integrity of the plants.

Even though that's not the case here, I'm still curious to figure out exactly what the plants are. Do you have any records of where they came from?

In any case, fresh banana seeds often don't have nearly as hard a time germinating as ones which have been dried and stored for a time (as are most seeds hobby growers are working with), so I wouldn't be too surprised if you get a lot more seedlings than you think you will.

interesting I did not realize it was unsual for basjoo to fruit and produce I have a small mat in
my yard that I allways save the the two largerst psudo stems and wrap the after the first frost they have bloomed and produced fruit the last two years and the imature bananas contain healthy seed of course as the seeme to bloom in late summer they allways get frost killed before they mature zone 7

Quote:

Originally Posted by obdiah (Post 304742)

Do you have photos of the seed you have produced from your basjoo?

no I dont but if they bloom this year I will try to take some but they all ways freeze before there mature enough to be viable