TommyOBananas

Hello all,

My first post here, so hopefully the image comes across correctly.

I planted my Musa Basjoo around 6 years ago here in NC and have been taking care of them since then. During the winter, I wrap them and then pull it off after the first frost.

One my largest Musa is doing something I have not seen before. It was putting out leaves and then all of a sudden it stopped. When looking at it, I noticed this large bolus/growth. No new leaves were coming out, just this thing. It has slowly been moving up, but slowly. I have no clue what this is and if this is a good thing. I am praying there is nothing wrong with it as this is my largest and favorite banana. It almost looks like an ear of corn growing out of it.

Please help with any advice or guidance. Thanks. And sorry for the picture being on its side...not sure why that happened.

Tom


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Akula

That's a flower! Congratulations!

TommyOBananas

Boy, I must sound like quite the newbie not to know that, but thank you for the help. Because this is obviously my first, how long does this usually take to move out and assume drape down? And leaves will still come up once this moves out right? Considering it is the start of the season, I do not have much of a canopy yet and wondered if the leaves keep coming after this?

Thanks again.

cincinnana

Congratulations.
The neat part is that it is early in the season.....so you might get bananas in the late fall.
I am lucky to a get a flower about every 3-5 years
The process will be great to watch.

Your flower and baby bananas should look similar to this.
Best of luck with the plant.


Basjoo flower
by Hostafarian
,
on Flickr

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Akula

Haha. Same thing happened to me last year. I agree that the flower looks exactly like an ear of corn when emerging. The flower usually drops down within a couple days. No more leaves will be produced once the flower emerges. The leaves you have now are what you will have to develop the bananas.

TommyOBananas

Thanks.

Well, that is too bad on no new leaves. I do not even really have any considering they just started emerging with the season change and we had a wind storm through here that ripped the only one I had. Unfortunate as it was my biggest Musa and largest canopy.

Paco

I'd still have some hope that you get some fruit to develop despite not really having much in the way of leaves.

I was able to harvest 64 namwah fruit from my first crop last summer. The thing was, I only had half of one full-sized leaf and the (flag) leaf that comes up just before the bud emerges as far as foliage went. The rest got taken out by a frost.

Historical posts on here said it could go either way and I wasn't disappointed. I was hoping that the underground mat that had formed would contribute. Whether it did or not, I couldn't tell. At any rate, it was worth having hope for sure. The fruit probably didn't fill out as much as they could have, but they weren't all angular and emaciated-looking either.

Good luck!