bigdog

Hey Tog, thanks for the pictures! I got to see lots of Musa acuminata supsp. siamea in Thailand (pics in my gallery), but that was about it for native species that I saw there. Interesting about the black pseudostems from higher elevations, and your theory makes sense. I listened to a talk from Dr. Sandy Echternacht, UT's herpetologist (well, he's a professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, but Herpetology is his field). He talked about black coloration on reptiles on some islands in the Carribean, and how it varied within the same species from island to island. I don't remember most of the seminar though...it was a seminar, lol. He has a bunch of articles published, I'm sure if someone was interested they could find them on Google Scholar or another scholarly search engine.

I know that there are some high elevation M. acuminata supsp. siamea in Northern Thailand somewhere, I saw it in a collection report on the INIBAP site once. I'd be interested if they had some exceptional cold-hardiness. Keep us updated! Thanks,

Frank