Forgive me for asking what is probably a newbie question. I just don't know enough about what is happening beneath the soil on bananas. I'll do some homework, I promise, but I have a question in the meantime.
If the corm or a good chunk of the corm bottom rots away but there are still white roots coming from the top, can an AeAe survive without it's corm? It just needs the roots; right?
Or does the rotting of the corm mean that the whole corm is on it's way out, roots and all, and therefore the plant won't survive.
As background, I bought four AeAe's from a man in Florida via Dave's Garden Marketplace for $100 each. Yes, there is something wrong with me
. He also advertised here not too long ago. One rotted pretty quickly, but the others seem to have sent out roots but are slow to sprout leaves. I checked on one, and repotted it with new well-draining soil, but I found the bottom of the corm rotting even though the top had sprouted some nice roots.
This one was the healthiest looking one. The others were much smaller:
