ron_mcb

i have a question for the people who always look at pics of long skinny purplish blooms. and or flowerless banana plants with powder wax on them. and shout blue java/ice cream. maybe im missing something??

OK what little i know about ice cream/ blue java is that its supposed to be a sport of Orinoco (or at least i heard).. the stems/stalks are supposed to be powdery and have a blue green tinge. the fruits are supposed to have a powdery blue tinge.. that's what i see from the stock photos anyway. kinda reminds me of Cavendish vs gran nain. when i asked no one really knew how to tell the two apart. i know a lot of the confusion has to do with p.t.c. mix ups. i wouldn't doubt that there is someone out there with a full grown 'blue java' that has red Cavendish markings and he has been selling or trading the pups and confusion get perpetuated.

i was trying to i.d. the powder wax banana which i now call tall red tinge Orinoco because the pups are always fire red from ground zero. i also point out the fact that they are regular orinoco..everyone was saying ice cream/blue java. it was weird because the fruits had a deep red pigmentation.. yes even on the fruits. the fruits are not powdery at all they are green and the red it has faded.

anyone have any real blue java fruit pics that are not stock??

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Gabe15

I'm not sure I really understand what your question is, but 'Ice Cream' is not a sport of 'Orinoco', they are very different plants. Vegetatively they can look similar, but when they flower they are easy to tell apart. Both have red/purple markings on the young fruit, but they are absent upon maturity. They also are not very waxy when young, but gain it as they mature.

As far "Cavendish vs. Gran Nain", that is not a logical comparison because 'Gran Nain' is a Cavendish cultivar, Cavendish being a subgroup of bananas which contains many different cultivars, 'Gran Nain' being just one.

Here are some photos of each, they are not very high quality because I don't have a very fast connection where I am, but you can see some differences, especially in the fruit.

Are you trying to ID the plant you have? If so you should add some photos here so we can see what you are questioning.

'Blue Java'/'Ice Cream'


'Largo'/'Orinoco'

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LilRaverBoi

Yeah, I've never heard that Orinoco was in any way similar to Ice Cream. Orinoco is a cooking banana (unless very ripe) from what I've read and Ice Cream is a dessert banana. From what I've read/seen of Orinoco, it's a pure green plant (mature or immature) and the fruit is very angular when immature. Ice Cream, from my experience, has no red markings whatsoever on leaves (mature or immature), has a pinkish/waxy pstem when immature, has pink outlines on leaves and pinkish petioles (more pink when young). It has a lot more color to the plant than any pic of Orinoco I've seen. Hope that helps a little.

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ron_mcb

no, i dont need an identification... i will try to clarify.

lots of people dont know the difference between blue java and orinoco.. i was giving the Cavendish (dwarf Cavendish should have been more specific) and gran nain as an example. lots of people dont know the difference between these two either (i think i can tell those two apart at flowering stage). ok back to the to subject.. they are supposed to be a similar but separate separate plants like Orinoco and blue java right??

although i cant say i can look at most banana flowers right off the bat and give a positive identification.. i can tell the difference between blue java and Orinoco by looking the fruits.

i was asking for ice cream fruit pics from some of the members to illustrate my point,and also to help clear up some of the confusion...

can you tell us the easy way we can identify the two at flowering stage??
easy being the key word here.



look at my regular Orinoco pics in my gallery.. it has plenty red.. almost more red than anything i've seen when its a juvenile, but i think its regular Orinoco. the fruits are angular and green

when i said i wouldn't doubt that there is a guy with "ice cream" pups with red Cavendish marking on the leaves and was giving out pups calling it blue java ...i was making fun of all the confusion that happens from the p.t.c. labs to the point where we the hobby growers plant these things in our yards (humor)..

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bepah

Too bad you didn't ask a year ago. I had 3 p-stems flower last year, none so far (and not expected) this year. My understanding is that the Blue Java is the color of the immature bananas as theyt ripen to a blue/green/yellow, as mine did.

My plants themselves have verythin red edges around the leaves and the pstems when young are powdery green.

There are a lot of photos of immature Blue Javas around. Unfortunately, none are mine this year....BTW, my fruit last year DID have a vanilla taste.

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sunfish

Ice cream last summer





To me the plant has more of a yellow color as Orinoco is dark green

ron_mcb

i friend of mine grew the blue java... his seemed really bluish and distinctive(not 100% reliable) .. maybe i wasn't paying any attention to all the red edges or tinge in the pups but i was identifying the plant based on the bluish color(not100% reliable)... the plant looked like a giant Georgia blue stem collard in color if you could imagine.

now looking at the flowers of both plants when the bud first pops .. looking at all the other facts/opinions discussed here you can you see how people get the two confused??
ok hypothetically a guy can grow Orinoco and in the fall see the bud and say im a pro it looks like ice cream and the plant dies back for the winter soon after without the fruits showing (which should be the best thing that gives a positive identification)... the whole time he's thinking he's growing ice cream... the pups get distributed as ice cream to 10 people those 10 start growing it.. ok those 10 compare their "ice cream" to 10 people who are actually growing ice cream... confusion and chaos without p.t.c. labs involved..

ok still waiting on a way to give a positive id and distinguish between the two by using flower bud... they kinda look the same to me when thy first push out.. i need to see the fruits.

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ron_mcb

i knew i remember reading something similar to this from two separate websites. ..... i remember reading it on a well known website the author of that particular website said specifically Orinoco but i wont elaborate any further....this website says that ice cream is a relative of bluggo but anyways this a link to where i read this:

Banana


we've already established that this is probably not accurate information.... ice cream is not related to bluggoe/ orinoco bananas.. i just ran across this same article today. thought i would post it.

thank you guys for setting me straight.

this article is also where i got the idea that gran nain can be identified by its non persistent male flowers (flowers between the fruits and terminal bud shed) .. dwarf Cavendish according to the author has persistent male flowers between the fruits and terminal bud.. im testing to see if this is also not true.

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Gabe15

Ya that website is full of errors. Both 'Grand Nain' and 'Dwarf Cavendish' have more or less persistent male flowers, though 'Grand Nain' flowers will sometimes shed though not completely. It is also different from 'Williams' which has a completely dehiscent male flowers.

Both Bluggoe types and 'Ice Cream' are ABB, but that does not mean they are closely related. ABB just means they are triploids with one set of chromosomes from some type of M. acuminata and two from some type of M. balbisiana, but the exact types and how they were put together are not part of that code and so you can have two ABB types that have completely different evolutionary histories.

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venturabananas

That misinformation about ice cream being a sport of Orinoco is widespread on the internet (e.g., also on Monterey Bay Nursery's site). Thank goodness that we have Gabe as the guardian of the truth.

For those of you who have eaten ice cream fruit, is it as wonderful as some websites proclaim? I'm looking for a somewhat tall, wind resistant variety that tastes good, and ice cream might fit the bill.

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