Re: Musa Formosana = Musa Basjoo?
As you probably know Erlend I am the collector of all the commercially available Musa formosana seed currently available, as far as I've seen.
I collect the seed myself directly from habitat in Taiwan.
I'm not going to argue if it is a separate species or not. All I can say is that Musa formosana and Musa basjoo are very similar and are almost certainly of the same decent. Musa formosana generally grows much taller, the average height of fruiting plants in habitat is about 15 - 20 feet tall.
All the seed I'm supplying these days all come from the same area - high altitude central Taiwan. However, some collections that I made over 3 years ago came from 3 separate regions. One from high altitude northern Taiwan, another from very low altitude south Taiwan, and the one from high central Taiwan. None of these seeds were distributed, I grew all of them here in the nursery in Cornwall. I wanted to see if there were marked differences in cold-hardiness between the 3 and also Musa basjoo from Ryukyu Japan. As yet inconclusive.
Of the 3, the southern one produced the best germination rates, and was the tallest, but I've opted for the central one to supply the seed. I have now arranged a local collector there to supply the seed.
I won't be back in Taiwan until next year now, but I'll be looking for Musa Insularimontana on Lan yu island on my next Taiwan expedition.
Phil
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