Interesting banana find

I found a couple of spindly banana plants at a department store the other day which were discounted and looked like they'd been grown far too long in poor light. One of them, however, had variegations on the leaves. I bought them both since they were only a few bucks and I wanted to compare against the solid green version. They've taken a couple weeks to stabilize and start putting out healthy leaves and even picked up some red on the new leaves, though it's too early to tell if this will be the actual leaf color or just a juvenile reaction to the greatly increased light. Either way, it's an interesting plant and I'm looking forward to seeing what it looks like when it grows bigger.

Let's hope the variegation holds.
Baby it!

That is really pretty

The leaf on the left looks a lot like my 'Dwarf Cavendish Musa' banana I got last year. The other leaves with the variegation are definitely different....


This message was edited Aug 6, 2007 5:21 PM

Looks like it could be Zebrina or Blood Banana. The pup fast and make a very attractive clump.

It appears the light variegation gets more pronounced as the leaf ages, and after a few more leaves, it's still appearing strongly on each one, now intermingled with the red.

Here's the newest leaf, showing the very pale variegation throughout which will eventually get bright and creamy like the other leaves.

Very, very cool! Geat find.

tropicaria,

My vote is w/ Brugie a Musa acuminata 'Rojo' aka musa acuminata ‘zebrina’ or blood banana.

Dean_W

how does it look now? any pics?

Beautiful banana. I would love to know when you have one to trade LOL.

It has a few more leaves, but otherwise looks pretty much the same. It was really pretty emaciated when I got it and took a while to plump up and start growing properly. Now, with the colder weather, it's not growing very fast anymore. I'll snap a picture when I move it into the greenhouse, but it's still pretty small. All of the leaves are still showing both the normal red markings and the yellow streaks, though the latter is hard to see until the leaf matures a bit.

I haven't decided how warm to keep the main greenhouse this year, so it's hard to say how fast it will grow this winter. Considering your beautiful, extensive collections, Brian, I'm surprised you don't already have one that looks like this! :)

I have the red ensete with similar variegation. This variegation you have is similar to what I see in a lot of Tissue cultured plants. In most of the TC plants it is not stable and quickly leaves the plant as it matures. Though a few are more stable and keep producing this variegation as it matures.

Well, so far so good on retaining the variegation.

Here is the other one I purchased at the same time for comparison.

The banana took a bit of frost this winter, but shook it off and has started putting out new variegated leaves. It's still only a few feet high and starting to get a bit choked, though. I need to go figure out what to do about that since I haven't seen it happen for a few years...

(Yes these new leaves have the cream color splashed on them, it just doesn't stand out so well until the leaves mature a bit.)

Good to see the variegation has stuck it out. The only bad thing about this is you cannot clone it or micro propagate it due to the unstable variegation. The good news is no one else will have it making it more rare and sought after.

Really beautiful foliage - I'm betting you'll never regret that purchase!

I have 2 of the same banana it is the Musa Zebrina AKA Blood banana its an ornamental banana it will produce yellow-orange to red flower spikes, the fruit is seeded and inedible but still very beautiful plant. They will produce pups very quickly if planted in the ground. Good buy I paid $15 each for mine and they were 4-6" tall at local nursery. Close to 3 ft tall now.

Bill

Yes, there also called 'Rojo' I belive. I have some and they pup like crazy. I just finished putting a drip irrigation line to all my bananas planted in the ground.

Bill and Dean_W....do yours have the 'cream' variegation in the foliage, too?

No, I don't have any cream variegation to the foliage that I know of. I'll have to take a picture of it later. It needs some water so it looks a little droopy.

It's been in the greenhouse for a while now, which seems to be a bit stressful on the plant (high temps), but the bright light brings out the color.

It's had two pups removed now, which unfortunately looked like this.

However, I'm much more optimistic about this new one slowly starting to develop.

Way to go!

that is really beautiful. i hope you're on to something

This photo reminds me of a friend that I have not talked to in sometime. He would find plants with slight variegations and he would cut any non variegated sections away and only stimulated the variegated areas. I first thought much of the plants were lost causes but to my suprize he was able to get very nice and some well known variegated plants from doing this. It seemed to take a lot of patients and knowning what to cut and what not. As it may seem your first plant had a fairly nice variegated leaf but this new sucker may have much more to offer. I have also heard of a story of an amazing banana one was found years ago it was a highly variegated blood banana with white variegations. The way it was described was much like a Ae Ae but the red sections would show up as different tons of pink. The plant died when trying to Tissue culture the only plant. I am wondering if you may be getting some odd colors in the red blotched section of your leaves. Yellow and red should make orange but this may not always be the case. I threw in a photo of a variegated Colocasia. It has shown to produce around 5 to 7 different colors but it still is not extremely stable.

Keep up the good work.

wow another beauty....if either of those are ever available to the public, plmk,ok? im serious...lol

tropicalaria,

looks like you have a new musa...maybe you should name it 'calico fantacy' or 'magic leopard' how cool!

Hi great find,I always get a few that have varigation in them like that but they soon out grow it,,missing links in the plants dna causes this but as the plant grows it fills in that missing inforamtion and than you lose the varigation!! this is do to tissue culture!