fwtexasmusic

So I was at my friend's house yesterday ( zone 7/8 in D/FW) and he has about a 12' x 6' wide patch in his yard that is just FILLED TO THE BRIM with small 2 or so week old banana plants. I am talking maybe 100-200 of them in this little space. It is crazy and I have literally seen nothing like it on this forum.

No pic yet ( will take today as I dig some up and take some home )

My question is what could this be?

He says each year they chop em down, mow over em, and more keep coming up and they grow tall like crazy. They dont survive the winter according to him.

This is driving me crazy! What kind could these be?

Foreverlad

When the pseudostem of a banana is regularly damaged, pups are often produced. Year after year, they'll continue to multiply, particularly with the underground corm maturing and growing further in size.

Cincinnana has a Flickr photostream which provides a pretty awesome example of the basjoos being cut back every winter and what happens in the spring. Check out the final 3 albums:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/110357684@N02/sets/

RobG7aChattTN

Those older basjoo mats actually should be dug up and divided and then they will actually grow much taller. Probably most of the height is on the pseudostems around the outside of the mat. There are a few other varieties that could survive that zone with mulch but without any special care it's almost certainly basjoo.

fwtexasmusic

There was way less than I thought. Probably about 50 or 60 of them in this little patch of grass but for a newbie banana guy, I was in heaven. Of course in my excitement I forgot to take a pic. I dug up about 10 and put in small pots and 3 of them in the ground at my house.

With these I have my fertilizer testing plants and can keep my tissue-cultured bananas that are doing good as my main plants and baby them more, so this works out well. At this point, I need a banana or two that I am not afraid to kill.

On these new guys, the stem / producing leaf area have little red-ish tips on the end so I am excited to see what kind they are and the stem has some red in it too. No red in the leaves but the leaves are considerably lighter green that my TC dudes.

Exciting stuff!