Originally Posted by Lagniappe

I try to remove all of the roots when I ship. I also remove them when transplanting in my own yard! I wondered about this after veiwing an article (Posted here somewhere) about banana culture in S.America. They remove all the roots and every bit of p-stem,leaving only a nice,clean bulb.
I found that the corms put out a better root system and grow faster after rooting than if I had left the old roots on. It doesn't take long at all. I bought a corm from Thailand recently and it filled a 3 gallon pot with roots in about 3 weeks. It's growing very well now. I also recieved a Chini Champa with a lot of roots and a few leaves, it had rot issues and died. If I had cleaned it up, removing all of the old roots and p-stem, I'm confident that it would have made it. I was caught up in the thinking that it was growing well, but it had been traveling for a while.
I do leave the entire root system and leaves intact on small plants! I only remove the roots on a baseball sized corm or larger.

You know thos bins at the garden centers that are full of Elephant ear bulbs? That's the way they were storing the corms at the plantation in that article.