My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

I bought this banana a couple of years ago from Wellspring on eBay. I actually bought two of them and they were little TC plants that were potted into little pots, about 3" square, with their names on them. They were sold as Dwarf Orinoco. This is the first year they've fruited for me, but the psuedostem is 10' 9" tall and several of the other plants are about as tall. My mat is definitely overgrown, but I had kind of given up on it and figured I would take it out. I started blooming a couple of weeks ago with the first two hands showing up on 9/4 and then by the end of 9/5 it had five hands and now, on 9/6 it has six hands. Last winter we only got down to 30F, even though we had many more days of frost than normal. Last year most of my bananas kept some green leaves but I'm not too optimistic of these bananas ever getting ripened this winter. :(


Anybody have a good ideal of what this banana might be?

As you can tell, the honey bees love my banana flowers!!! :)

From August 28th:





From September 4th:



From September 6th:



Yes, honey bees love bananas!!!

Thanks for looking,

Harvey

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

nope no idea, but it is a beautiful flower. my fav pic is the one with the honey bees. thats awesome!!!

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

I told Pete I wanted to charge admission for the bee photo! lol

By the way, I've got about 72-75 fingers so far out of six hands. No male flowers yet! :)

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Water the plant every day. So the fruits can grow a little bit faster, while the temperature is not below 14 °C. When you have 7 or 8 hands cut the blossom. So the force goes into the fruit and not into the blossom. After the fruits have reached approx. average of 7.5 or 8 inch cut the whole bunch and cut the hand into clusters of 3 to 6 fruits. Wash them with clear water (Latex) and then put every 2 days a cluster into a plastic bag of a supermarket together with one or two apples. You will be surprise how fast they will be ripening. In tropical conditions (my ex office in Ecuador had 28 °C and 70 % rel. hum. it took 25 days to ripen a box with green bananas. 3 bananas in a plastic bag with 2 apples I could eat after 4 to 6 days.

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Don't know what it is, but it is a nice plant Harvey. The flowers look a bit different from my orinoco, but perhaps there are different strains.
Cassie

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Looks good Harvey! The shape of the fingers is different from the Orinocos I've seen and grown. And Chris is right, you'll be surprised to see how young the bananas can be and yet still ripen!

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Based upon your name for it, it must be "ABB" hahahaha.

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

I do not know what the type is but i wanted to say what brillant pictures of the flower and fruit. You have captured the image well, love the bees in last one

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Thanks, everyone.

Chris, the plant gets water every day unless I'm just too busy which happens maybe once a week. They don't ever seem to be lacking moisture. Yesterday we were at about 101F (38C+) and we got down to about 72F (20C) lasts night. I did not water my plants yesterday as I was already busy with other farm work all day long (getting ready for chestnut harvest). Still, all of my bananas looked good by the end of the day. If it weren't for the pesky mosquitoes, I would have watered them last night when I was checking them out. I did see a huge moth on the flower with glowing amber eyes and a wingspan of about 4 inches. It almost seemed like a hummingbird the way it flew off but it came back. I grabbed my camera but, unfortunately, it was gone when I got back and I did not get a photo. Pitangadiego suggests leaving from 8 to 12 inches of the flower stalk on below the last hand to prevent dessication of the fruits, but I might just try wrapping the end of the stem with something to prevent this (our humidity typically gets down to 20% or so). I have two other plants with flowers and haven"t cut the male bud yet, though I've been meaning to get to it. Just waiting to see if my Dwarf Brazilian will touch the ground (about 6 inches away now) and I was going to photograph my other unknown, but I need to clear some weeds to have a less embarrassing shot! Randy turned down my offer for free weeds. ;)

Thanks Chris and Mitchel for giving me some hope that I may get these things to mature enough. We should have another 6-9 weeks of decent weather. I was figuring I'd leave the fruit on until the leaves got fried by frost. I might get lucky like last year and not have a heavy frost.

I'm wondering if an actual thinning of fruit would accelerate fruit maturation significantly. Some fingers are smaller as it is, so it could be like thinning out the runts, etc. I'd rather have 60 nice mature bananas than 90 that didn't quite make it. Anybody with any thoughts on this?

Also, I've read at times about bunches being bagged. Is that something that can help speed up maturity? I'd be reluctant to do anything like that right now with the hot weather we're having but maybe it could be helpful later on when the weather cools down.

Thanks again,

Harvey

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Ripening of bananas doesn't depend of packaging. For long transports over distance (p.e. Ecuador to Europe, etc.) it is a must to pack the bananas in boxes you can see in supermarket. The transport is refrigerated at 14 °C and 85 % rel. hum in dark “rooms” (Reefer Container with +/- 1000 boxes (18,14 kg) or a whole vessel up to 300.000 boxes). With systems are transports up to 25 day possible having a loss of 2 % of the boxes. In the destination you can wait until ripening (In Arabia they do this. From Philippines they order 4 or 8 kg Boxes. This is the volume that they eat in a big family during a week). But USA, Europe receives the green bananas and put them into ripening centers. And ripening is controlled by temperature, rel. humidity and as accelerator ethylene. This gas accelerates the transforming of starch/amylum into sugar. Green bananas have content of 80 % starch / 20 % sugar and ripe bananas 20 % starch / 80 % sugar. And apples produce this gas. So never store green bananas beside apples!! ;)
I think that I should prepare a nice video explaining this with pictures, …

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Chris, I'm not sure if your last message pertains to my post or not. The ripening part I understand well enough. I'm just concerned about the banana fruits growing large enough and maturing before cold weather sets in. Sometimes weather in November can be fairly warm here but sometimes it can be pretty cool/cold.

Harvey

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Sorry about that. From flowering until harvesting we calculate 12 to 13 week in tropical regions like Ecuador and Philippines. I hope that is an info that helps you.

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Thanks, Chris. I've heard figures of 4-6 months for others here in California. Even 12 weeks would put me at the end of November when things will have already slowed down quite a bit here. Frost is even possible by then, though I don't remember every seeing frost that early here.

My Dwarf Brazilian bloomed about 8 weeks ago and still has quite a ways to go, it seems.

Thanks,

Harvey

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

I went back out tonight and, sure enough, the giant moth was back feeding on my banana flower. The wingspan is a bit larger than is apparent in these two shots. I had to get these shots off fairly quickly before it flew off like last night.





Anybody have any I.D. information on this moth?

Thanks for looking,

Harvey

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Cool pictures Harvey. The moth looks llike a white-lined sphix moth.

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Thanks Cathy. I was thinking it was either some kind of sphinx or hawk moth. It's rare that I see them around here but fun to learn that it returned the next night for the banana nectar.

Harvey

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Way to go Harvey.

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Definitely not Orinocco. Looks more like Misi Luki, Belle or a Namwah. Tasting will confirm.

The fellows in Mooooodesto sometimes trim the puttom hands off, and leave 3-4, which supposedly accelerates ripening. Leave them on till you the first night you expect a frost, and then cut them off and bring them in side. Alternatively bag them on the tree and put a lightbulb or something inside to keep the bananas from freezing, and leave them on as long as possible.

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Cool shots of the moth Harvey!

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Thanks, Jon, for the thoughts. If I can get them to mature, I'll send you some to try out. If I remember!

Scot, thanks for the compliment!

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

My banana finished off with 88 fingers, though there might have been a few more as it's hard to tell as they transition from female to male flowers. In an effort to get bananas to mature before frosty weather, I cut off the flower bud this afternoon along with any male flowers and thinned out fingers from several hands with hopes that the remaining fingers will size up more quickly. I think I have about 70 fingers left. I thought about cutting off even more, but it's a hard thing to do! I figure if the flower stem shrivels up some I'll go ahead and cut off the bottom one or two hands entirely.

Wish me luck! :)

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

I haven't ever thinned the bunches on my trees, but at this time of the year... I doubt it would hurt!


Jeff

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Another plant from this same mat sent up a flag leaf just before my recent trip and now the bud is close to opening. This puts it about a week ahead of last year. I'll post photos when there's something worth taking a shot of.

Tony now has a pup of this plant and it will be interesting to see how it performs for him.

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

welcome back!


just in time for the CAL Expo state fair--i'm wondering if there might be some banana plants for sale there?

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

I haven't been to the state fair in several years and won't be able to make it this year. I don't recall seeing banana plants for sale there in the past. There is a special day in the spring or early summer at the city zoo where our former CRFG president has sold banana plants and other things.

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Harvey,

Were you ever able to confirm the identity of this banana? Those are some great photos of it.

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Brent, no positive I.D. on it but somewhere in some thread I can't find (or maybe PMs?) Mitchel guessed it might be tall Namwah and Gabe indicated he thought that was a pretty good guess. I'm hoping that Tony can get it to produce a mature bunch in his climate and get together with Jon on it to figure it out. They were great tasting bananas. I picked the bunch on 12/28 after there was already frost damage to the leaves and about 3-4 weeks later the fruit was ripening and had a nice flavor and texture, although they were small (maybe 4" long or so and 1.25" in diameter). There's a goofy photo of my in my gallery holding the bunch of ripe fruit.

Thanks,

Harvey

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Here's a picture of my bunch from this mat in 2009. The bees are active at my hive located about 100 yards away but they haven't found the banana flower yet. This bunch has a little over 100 fingers, I believe.

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

I have similar moths that like my papayas.
They like the male flowers the best and I think they help polinize. They just hover like a hummingbird.

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Here's an update on this banana for 2009. The fruit have sized up some but I'm still hoping for more. We had 3 mornings with frost this past week and I used a smudge pot on two nights and also sprayed the banana plants with water early in the morning to help warm them up (just a little help is enough). I believe I'm a little ahead of where I was at this time last year and last year's bunch turned into some very nice tasting bananas. I will cut off the male flower in the next day or two and bag the bunch, helping keep them a little warmer.

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Is that a picture of your plant Harvey?

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Wow! thats looks great harvey! Did you ever figure out what kind it was? Or maybe I missed it.

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Yes same mat as last year. Just took the photo on Friday, figuring it would be more photogenic than after I bag it! ;)


No, Mitchel guessed it was Namwah (not dwarf) and Gabe thought that sounded reasonable. I sent a pup to Tony a while back so he can try growing it to it's full potential so we can see what full-sized fruit should look like.

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Looking at the photos now it definitely is a Namwah of sorts, though there are mulitple varieties. It is likely whatever the common one in the US mainland is.

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

I forget who else from the org had a mix up from Wellspring around the same time as me. These were supposed to be Dwarf Orinoco and the mistake happened several years ago. The other person just mentioned last year or so that Wellspring had acknowledged the mistake (but I hadn't received word), but I now wonder if they ever knew what they had sold as Dwarf Orinoco. I guess I should write them, though it is somewhat mute at this point. Still, I just sent a note to Wellspring to see if the ever figured it out.

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

Here are some photos of different Pisang Awak subgroup (of which 'Namwah' is a member) bananas for comparison.


'Kayinja'


'Dwarf Namwah'



'Pisang Awak'

Re: My Mystery Busy Bee Banana
 

I wrote to Wellspring the other night and Donvan replied tonight. Donovan doesn't recall making any widespread mistake back in 2006 but, after chatting, said that their plants do come from AgriStarts and that my plan was most likely a Namwah, Rajapuri, or Ice Cream. So, for now, Namwah seems to be the most reliable I.D.

Speaking of mystery bananas, anybody want go guess what they might end up in this eBay auction??? :ha:
Variegated Banana Musa Ornata Roxb 2 Seeds Rare Limited - eBay (item 180436296962 end time Nov-29-09 20:38:36 PST)