Bananas

Last week I posted some photos of the side garden that included some shots of the hardy bananas, Musa basjoo. Technically they are in the back garden, but since you can see them in the long view along the side of the house I tend to think of them in the side garden too.

Since there was some excitement about them (okay, one comment, but I'm easily guided into post topics these days) I thought I'd post an update.

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It seems like these plants are well ahead of where they would normally be at the end of June, but I suppose that's what a mild winter and extra-wet spring followed by a hot June will do.

Here's what things looked like at the end of winter:

Pretty much the same angle today:

Interesting to see that the thickest stem from last year did not survive. Plenty did though, and many more pups have emerged!

The lowest leaves keep you from getting completely underneath the canopy right now, but still some nice leaves up there!

I'm not sure how measure the height of these -- is it the tallest point of the upward-pointing leaves? If so, these are at about 12' (3.6m) already.

The thickest pseudostem isn't huge yet...

...as I think I could just about get both hands around it. Let's see what it looks like in August!

You don't see photos from this angle too often...

...but the bananas make a great foreground element for this shot of the patio garden.


I've got one other type of banana growing right now, golden lotus banana. There's the one that's newly planted in the side garden:

And then this smaller one in the back, which was looking great until something decided to take some chomps out of it a couple of days ago:

The damage seems to be superficial, but the floppy leaves don't look too great right now. At least the surrounding plantings distract you a bit from it:

The bananas are an integral part of my garden now. To think that I once thought that banana plants were ugly and didn't want them in my yard!

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