swincher

Hi everyone! Just joined and posted some of these photos in the introduction section, but I figure posting them again here for a specific purpose is OK. Long story short, I ordered seeds from the "seedman" website (so please let me know how trustworthy the ID of seeds is there!) for three types of bananas:

• 10 seeds of M. thomsonii
• 10 seeds of M. balbisiana
• 10 seeds of Helen's hybrid

I had one of the thomsonii seeds sprout within a couple months, and one of the Helen's hybrid soon after that, but nothing else by 6 months. At that point I gave up and tossed the soil with the seeds into my bin for reusing soil, and it got used for various stuff. As you can probably guess, over the next couple months I had random banana seedlings popping up in unexpected places.

As far as the two "known" plants, here's the Helen's hybrid seedling about 7 months from germination:



And here's what was sold as M. thomsonii (I gather possibly not accurate) about 7.5 months from germination:



Please feel free to tell me if either of those looks wrong! Now for the truly unknowns, ranging from 2 months to 4 months from germination at this point, so please let me know which of the 3 possible bananas (or any others if they were mislabeled!) you think these are:









Thanks!

sirdoofus

For what its worth, the plant in the first pics looks just like the HH I grew from seed, of course I can't be certain the seeds I got were true either.

__________________
Who keeps calling me nuts??

subsonicdrone

i am in a similar situation with seedlings
the one in the 3rd pic look like one i have which i was guessing might be musa thomsonii
just a guess though as i am unsure myself

i did have the balbisiana var balbisiana labelled correctly though
i have a pic of one here:
subsonicdrone's 2021 thread

the ones i thought were thomsonii are the ones with the red underside to the leafs

swincher

I had seen a post where someone pretty convincingly argued that none of the M. thomsonii seeds or plants available in the trade are actually this species, but who knows! I got mine from Seedman, no clue where they source their stock.

Thanks! Here are some more photos of my one known-to-be an alleged thomsonii, as well as some photos of it as a smaller seedling:

subsonicdrone

i have been basing my guesses on google image searches which relies on the images to be labelled correctly which might not be the case
this seedling is the one i thought looked like youres
at one point i was thinking it could be musa velutina markkuana
because the cigar leaf was quite white on the underside as it unfurled (similar to the first image which comes up in a search)
that trait has changed as it got bigger, now the underside is red
these are all just guesses though i really have no idea

swincher

I'd say by comparison to my two known seedlings, this one seems like it's looking like Helen's hybrid:



This one seems like it's the same as my alleged M. thomsonii (including the yellowish hue):




Both of these look different from the other two and similar to each other, so I'm guessing M. balbisiana:








At least those are my best guesses so far.