Clueless 312.7

[clt_capt]

Modern, commercial strains of banana don’t have seeds. (Well, they do, but they’re tiny and sterile, unlike wild and often inedible varieties of bananas, which have large and viable seeds.) Seedless fruit-bearing plants (think of navel oranges) normally propagate only with human help—as in transplanting cuttings—because the plant has no natural way to regenerate when it dies. Here again, bananas break the mold. Each banana plant produces just one bunch of fruit over its lifetime of about a year and then dies—or at least appears to. But the stem above ground is just a portion of the plant, the so-called pseudostem. There is also an underground stem, called a rhizome, which produces new shoots at the base of the visible stem. These begin growing into new, flowering stems just as the old one is dying. The new plant, then, really isn’t new at all, and is genetically identical to its predecessor.

[Tenacious]

That's why I come to SFC! Thanks Cltcapt Who would have thunk it!

[Anders]

Fred is right. I noticed Tuesday that the funky shaped leaf came out and the pod follows right behind it. Kind of late in the summer but I should have fruit showing next week. At least I won't have to did this one up this winter.

I was fricken typing my answer when a guy walked in my office and distracted me, I should have won that one, oh well, one day

[WAHOONBOX]

I AM ABSOLUTELY SPEECHLESS AS TO THE DIRECTION THIS ONE WENT...

HERE I AM ...CONCENTRATING...GETTING IN THE ZONE...MENTAL PREPPED TO THE MAX....LOADING MY TRUCK UP FOR A 7 HOUR VOYAGE TO OC....AND NOW THIS

SPEECHLESS.....

[Robja]

Boy Fred you seem to have a vast knowledge of banannas. You are correct though. I started with one tree that eventually bore fruit but over the course of a couple of years it produced a dozen or more baby trees then it snowballed from there. I have given away well over 100 trees in the last several years. Its getting to be a pain in the ass digging them up in November and laying them on the floor of the basement then putting them back in the ground in April. But since I can't afford to move to Central America yet its the closest I can get to enjoying a tropical paridise.