Post #485059 by bananabobs on Thu, Sep 24, 2009 8:00 PM

On 2008-06-14 19:56, ahvyna wrote:
Tip from a Master Gardener friend of mine: We put everything not cold tolerant in pots in the ground and pull them in fall, force them into dormancy. I've had the same plants in every year, even after the spell of below freezing temps we had a couple of years ago (in San Diego!). And the "nanners" came back fine despite being frozen to the ground. Epsom really made a difference bringing them back.

My brother in Vermont does the pot in the ground thing and says he hasn't lost anything since he's tried it.

The plant showing in this photo is called a Red Banana, however it is not a banana, it is related.
Ensete ventricosum is a large, fleshy-stemmed plant with a head of banana-like leaves. The plant grows between 6 and 12 m high. It is a monocotyledon and does not have a true, branched trunk, but an unbranched pseudostem formed by the imbricated (overlapping) bases of petioles (leaf stalks), left behind when old leaves die. The pseudostem broadens towards the base and this gives rise to the species name ventricosum, which means 'with a swelling'. The plant seldom forms suckers from the base. The simple, large leaves with a thick, rose-pink midrib and numerous pinnately parallel nerves extending to the margin, are spirally arranged.

This plant only flowers and bears fruit once and then it dies. The flowers form large, showy bunches or spikes 2 to 3 m in length. The male flowers usually occur at the top and the female or bisexual flowers lower down. The cream-coloured flowers have only one petal, but are surrounded by large, showy, maroon bracts. Flowering usually takes place in early summer (October and November). Insipid, banana-like fruits form after flowering. They have a yellow skin with black spots and contain a row of pea-sized, hard, black seeds. Under normal conditions plants flower when they are about eight years old.