Two more banana trees have made flowers, and one of them is proudly kicking out lots of bananas! The other is in the flower stage still but will soon have bananas. And... I have no idea what types of bananas they are!
When I bought each tiny tissue cultured banana plant starting in 2016, I carefully labelled them with a tiny plastic label stuck into the ground. Little did I know at the time that the mat of each banana plant would be 2-3 feet across and that the plastic plant label would be lost in the mat. So although I remembered my favorite bananas, I've forgotten a few of their names. These guys could be Goldfinger, Gran Nain, Cavendish, or Mona Lisa... who knows? But they're gorgeous.
Here's the one that flowered a couple of weeks ago and is now covered in bananas, very similar to the size and magnitude of Ice Cream's bananas.
The close up of the hands is beautiful, so perfect and aligned.
And the EXTREME close up is pure art.
The trunk of this banana plant is a foot across, hard to tell from the picture but he's a meaty banana plant/tree considering he started about 6" tall and 1/2" thick.
And of course, the magnificent flower with it's strong fragrance is so stunning.
The 2nd banana plant is about 12 feet tall, so it's really hard to get close enough to see the flower right now before it turns up and over. It's still sticking straight up over the banana plant, ready to turn over soon.
This view shows the beautiful red/purple color of the flower.
And here's the whole mat, with pups ready to take over when the flowering banana is done.
Remember Mona? Here she is today, pups well on their way to make fruit.
I love this picture, as it shows the original Mona truck chopped off about 6" off the ground. Once the trunk has flowered and fruited, it's done! Pups, your turn to make fruit.
And finally, I have found plant tags on Amazon that last forever. I read a review about them by a scientist in Alaska who tags plants with these aluminum write-on tags stapled to wood stakes, and when he comes back year after year they're still there and still legible. I was sold! So I'll never forget my bananas' (or any of the other fruit trees soon to be planted!) names again.
