Quote:
Originally Posted by PR-Giants
What is the easiest way to see the difference?
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By looking at them when they're young, like all the rest of us, instead of waiting until they're adults. Maybe this is a language thing, because virtually everyone except you is using the word 'sucker' to apply to young plants, whereas you are choosing to continue to refer to adults as suckers.
Adults that started off as water suckers should be very similar to adults that started off as sword suckers, since they've had a long lifespan (a year?) to catch up on root development. So if you're looking to differentiate, it just doesn't seem like it would make any sense at all to wait until they're adults before trying to determine which is which.
If you're wondering, "Well, if as adults water suckers eventually catch up to sword suckers in terms of root development, at least in nearly ideal conditions like are found in Puerto Rico, then why would the bunches tend to weigh slightly less?" the answer is almost certainly that nutritional deficiencies along the way during development have lingering effects at flowering/fruiting time. (Richard, iirc, has posted a study showing that potassium deficiencies in early development have a lingering negative impact on fruit production as an adult during that first fruiting cycle. So since water suckers have vastly inferior root systems during the early and adolescent stages, it seems to make perfect sense that adults that started off as water suckers would tend to have smaller first bunches.)