Raja Puri dwarf banana flowering

[Tindomul]

All this talk has me thinking about Gros Michel.

[estación seca]

Originally Posted by DeaC

Your garden sounds quite exotic! Have you tried using the leaves as cooking "pots"?

Not yet!

---------- Post added at 09:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:44 PM ----------

Originally Posted by No-Pro-mwa

Cool, I wish I could grow things like this.

There are super-dwarf Cavendish bananas, like Leafmite has, that will fruit in a 5-gallon / 18 liter pot. I don't think they are hard to find online.

---------- Post added at 09:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:46 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Tindomul

All this talk has me thinking about Gros Michel.

Gros Michel was the banana variety found at markets many decades ago. A strain of Fusarium fungus began spreading worldwide and almost wiped out the clone. Cavendish replaced Gros Michel for commercial growing; it makes smaller plants, and its bananas tolerate shipping better. But Gros Michel is supposed to taste much better than Cavendish.

There is now another strain of Fusarium spreading worldwide, wiping out Cavendish. Bananas are going to get much more expensive, and it is likely another variety will replace Cavendish as the standard supermarket banana.

[Leafmite]

I heard about the fungus, too. They are working to develop a new banana that is resistant (but that will only last for a while....)

Fortunately, when one grows a plant in an unlikely place, one is unlikely to have issues with the usual pests or diseases.

[Tindomul]

Gros Michel are still available locally ex; Trinidad. My friend who recently visited just had some. I wonder why people like you can't grow one or two.

[estación seca]

Gros Michel and most bananas are too tall for us. We get strong winds all the time, and they would shred a tall banana. This sets them way back and they won't bloom until they regrow... then it blows again....

We also get a few nights of frost most winters, and a tall banana is too hard to protect. I grow the dwarf bananas in front of my house under the wide roof overhang. In the winter I drape frost cloth from the roof down to the ground around the bananas. They are in front of a big window so they get a little heat from the house. This is enough to keep them from freezing.

Banana plants of any size will survive long-term here, but will be frozen to the ground most winters. Since it takes 18 months for a shoot to fruit, bananas grown this way here never fruit. But they make a great tropical effect.

[Tindomul]

That really explains it, Thank you.

[UserName]

Are there fruit bats in your region to visit the banana blooms?

[estación seca]

My neighbors probably think I'm batty.

We have around 10 species of small insectivore bats in the Sonoran Desert. Some of them eat pollen, too. A number of these bats feed on the taller columnar cacti of Arizona and the neighboring state of Sonora. I've never seen bats visiting my bananas. The plant is exotic to the Sonoran Desert and flowers don't resemble those of any cactus.

We don't have any fruit bats because for most of the year there is no fruit. The saguaros ripen around the end of May, but are eaten quickly by birds. Native prickly pear cacti ripen in midsummer. That is about it for sweet wild fruit a fruit bat might enjoy.

A substantial number of cacti have evolved to be pollinated by bats. These tend to be columnar, so flowers are presented up in the air. Their flowers are short and wide, the better to reach pollen with a little snount. They often have substantial hair or bristles along the tube for the bats to grab with their little bat hands and feet for support, and with very heavy waxy petals, as a sturdy landing/crash pad. Examples are the saguaro, Carnegiea gigantea, here in Arizona; the cardón, Pachycereus pringlei, native to Sonora south, and Baja California; and almost all species in Pilosocereus, from México south to Brasíl. Pilosocereus also mostly have the flowering portion of the stem covered in dense wool, called a cephalium, the better for bat grabbing. However, fruits of these species are mainly eaten by birds.

Tom Van Devender at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum has studied bat pollination of Pachycereus pringlei on Tiburón Island. The bats live on the Sonoran mainland, and fly across the Sea of Cortéz at night to feed on the pollen. He calculated a bat could get enough calories for the round trip flight by feeding on pollen from only 2-3 flowers, which takes but a few minutes; the bats absolutely stuff themselves with pollen each night. Flowering occurs while female bats are pregnant. He concluded Pachycereus pollen is a major constituent in the bat's annual economy, even though they only bloom for a few weeks.

[UserName]

It must be a huge amount of work to keep yours hydrated in desert conditions.
Folks around here -- the usually rainy Gulf Coast -- grow them for the same reason -- the beautiful scenery they provide.

---------- Post added at 01:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:23 AM ----------

Originally Posted by estación seca

My neighbors probably think I'm batty.

We do not think so. Your posts here are uncommonly informative, and your gardening sounds so well considered/planned.