Garden Alphabet: Banana

I only wish I were able to grow bananas like this, but this pictures was taken in the backyard of a house my friend was renting in Manoa Valley, Oahu, Hawaii. I only wish the bananas had been ripe. I’ve never had fresh banana off the tree. It would have been quite a treat.

We can grow banana here in Southern California, but they don’t fruit very well, if at all. They simply want more heat and moisture than our area can provide. They will grow, sometimes quite large and beautifully, but not fruit.

Banana

Banana

“A banana is an edible fruit produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants of the genus Musa.[1] (In some countries, bananas used for cooking may be called plantains.) The fruit is variable in size, color and firmness, but is usually elongated and curved, with soft flesh rich in starch covered with a rind which may be yellow, purple or red when ripe. The fruits grow in clusters hanging from the top of the plant. Almost all modern edible parthenocarpic (seedless) bananas come from two wild species – Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. The scientific names of most cultivated bananas are Musa acuminata, Musa balbisiana, and Musa × paradisiaca for the hybrid Musa acuminata × M. balbisiana, depending on their genomic constitution. The old scientific name Musa sapientum is no longer used.” . — Wikipedia.org

 
More information on Dudleya:

 

Previously in Garden Alphabet:

Read more on this topic:

  1. Garden Alphabet: Acanthus
  2. Garden Alphabet: Sweet Potato (Ipomoea batatas)
  3. Garden Alphabet: Dudleya
  4. Garden Alphabet: Catalpa
  5. Garden Alphabet: Calla Lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica)

2 thoughts on “Garden Alphabet: Banana”

  1. My bananas fruit in Altadena, and I see lots of Pasadena folks with fruiting bananas, too. I feed them with lots of manure and pour dishwater and other “used” water on them, and they do pretty well. They’re also up against the wall on the east side of the house. That may help, too.

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