Max363

Kevin -the plant you originally referenced in this post is - if you pardon the expression -a "generic" or perhaps species ensete ventricosum: it has beautiful wide green leaves with the distinctive red rib on the reverse side of the leaf. It can be grown from seed - as I did myself last year, or bought as a small or larger plant. From what I have read or seen, the ensete ventricosum - var. Maurellii is like the red/black leafed cousin of the greenleafed-red ribbed variety and is obtained from tissue cloned plants - or by slicing a mature plant to a stump and then gutting heart out of it!! <--This rather brutal propagation method has been described and documented here on another thread. Both are beautiful plants worthy of your attention, so you cannot make a "wrong" purchase. The Maurelli type is commercially more expensive due to the difficulty in propagation, but there are often listings on here with very reasonable prices for Maurellii starter plants. I hope this helped make it a little clearer to you now ... and sorry for being one of the hijackers of your thread!

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