A little help
 

What do you think about this one? There is a Manzano nearby with noticeably less color. I'm thinking Mysore...




Dwarf Red in foreground, mystery musa, goldfinger on the end...

Re: A little help
 

Re: A little help
 

If this guy is Misi Luki then I want to know what my "Misi Luki" from Agri-starts are! The Misi Luki I have is much less colorful. I know they are from the same group but I'm highly suspect any time I see "Misi Luki" being sold.

Re: A little help
 

Re: A little help
 

Agristarts is not perfect, I have purchased 2000 plants from them and have some bananas that I never ordered. I have some Ice Cream, some Orinoco, and even an ornamental variety that I never ordered. Out of 144 Dwarf Namwahs, I found 3 ice creams and 3 orinocos. Their Hua Moas are terribly contaminated with some weird mutant. Somewhere along the line I picked up a sumatrana, but actually caught it before I planted it out in the field. Also, agristarts' Misi Luki is nothing like a Mysore, it is in the same group as Nam Wah. Their pisang ceylon is in the same group as mysore. As far as I can tell so far, the Kandrians and the plantains are on type.

Re: A little help
 

Good to know. I've got some Kandarians from them too. I really wished I could get more info on that one. So is it fair to say that most "Misi Luki" are actually Tall Namwahs? Mine reached 16.5 feet overall last season. They likely to top that this year.

Re: A little help
 

My Manzanos all have pink/red stems with pink/red midribs. Yours doesn't look much different.

Re: A little help
 

My understanding is that the underside of the leaf or the cigar leaf is probably the best way to tell Mysore at this stage -- it should be purplish. Midribs seem highly variable. I have single plants that have red midribs on some leaves and green on others.

Perhaps it's true that "Misi Luki" from Agristarts (and from others in the US) is tall Namwah, but perhaps it is not. I think the jury is still out on that. They seem to be in the same subgroup -- Pisang Awak.

From what I can tell, the true "Misi Luki" (a Mysore of some sort) has never been available in the US, so if you bought something as a Misi Luki here, it isn't a Mysore type.

Maybe the experts can chime in.

Re: A little help
 

I was looking at my banana poster from TREC yesterday and it hit me that my bunches from the agristarts misi luki look like what is labeled as "Ducasse" on the poster. Apparently in Australia, they call Dwarf Namwah "Dwarf Ducasse". All I can tell you about the Kandrians is that they take a really long time to fruit, they get really tall, have enormous pseudostems, and make large bunches of Orinoco type fruit. I lose a mat of two everytime we get a strong thunderstorm. They don't just break and fall over, they uproot.

Re: A little help
 

It seems like the Misi Luki is possibly Namwah, but the tall type. I suppose the above is a Mysore-type. Do the Kandarians/Kandrians get nearly as big as the Saba? That's what I've heard...

Re: A little help
 

Yes the Kandrians get as tall as Saba from what I've seen. Mine don't produce a lot of suckers, which is good because I really don't need to put too much effort into them because at most I can get $10/bunch.

Re: A little help
 

That should give you an idea of how tall they get. The plants to the left that are short are Dwarf Namwah

Re: A little help
 

Thanks for the picture. Looks just like a Saba. What are the subtle differences? What about hardiness? I just started growing mine this year.

Re: A little help
 

The main difference is that the fruit looks different, as far as cold tolerance goes, it's hard saying. It made it through January 2010 largely unscathed with a low of 33. This year it got really cold, and pretty much everything below 4' got roasted. It got below 30 and burned out the tops of some of the leaves of Kandrian but it bounced back. The main issue I have is that it doesn't hold up well in the wind.