Basjoo; not living up to its name?
 

I must say I am not that impressed with musa basjoo or ensete v. this year, compared to musa sikkimensis and the relatively new musa "helen".

I live in a cool climate. All my plants growing outside have the same conditions. I have tried 3 different banana types, along with ensete ventricosum. Everyone knows ensete ventricosum is a rapid grower, and I have witnessed this myself previously here in Norway. We had a warmer than usual summer. So why is sikkimensis and musa "helen" seriously outpeforming musa basjoo and ensete ventricosum? The helens that were seedlings this spring while the basjoos were a foot, are now getting larger than these basjoos.

The case with this years ensete: The batch of seeds from RPS was not so great. Germination was eratic, and seedlings lacked vigour. In previous years nothing could stop neither seeds nor plants. Can anyone come up with a theory about why batches of seeds and the respective plants can be like this?

My 10 or so basjoos were bought from a nursery in the netherlands. I have a theory about musa basjoo beeing cloned too much over the years, in other words tissue-cultured over too many generations. This will over time make it lack vigour, right? Or wrong?

I am trying "Musa formosona" from seed now, wich is supposed to be the same species as "musa basjoo". None sprouting yet, but I am sure exited to see if these outperform the tissue-cultured ones.

Anyone tried other banana-species side by side with basjoo this year?

Erlend

Re: Basjoo; not living up to its name?
 

Ereland, I wish I could answer your questions. I am equally curious about the questions you raised.

Re: Basjoo; not living up to its name?
 

I have two of these about 6' tall with multiple pups. I too have not been impressed with certain qualities the Basjoo has. I live in CA (zone 9) and have noticed lots of leaf sun burning this year, whereas most of my other eddible fruiting types take the heavy sun and heat well. We have had 100+ days here in the valley. Don't know if they had sufficient time to acclimate to these high temps.