N2tropicAL

anyone have experiences with this species?

Zac in NC

Well Hayes, I have 4 seedlings I am growing out right now to try out next season. They are growing in old PDN pots if that tells you their size. I got the seeds from Joe K in New Jersey, who I believe bought them from rarepalmseeds.com. They are growing quite well.

Zac

bigdog

I got mine from Joe K. too! Mine survived the winter in a cool garage, if that means anything. I'm sure it would do fine in your jungle, Hayes. It's from Northeast India, where so many cold-hardy bananas come from. Mine had a hard time with the heat this summer when in full sun, so I put it in the shade. It did better in the shade.

MediaHound

http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Musa_Thomsonii
Musa Thomsonii

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Basjoofriend

Hi,

I tested some Musa thomsonii some years ago, I protected them like Musa basjoo, but they are not hardy despite of the basjoo winter protection.

Musa thomsonii is not suitable for climates with cold and frosty winters with continuous black frost periods with deep frozen ground, despite of USDA zone 8a in Hamburg. The duration of frost periods is important to tell about hardiness, not only the lowest winter temperatures! Otherwise you need to heat the winter protection with thermostat switched heating cables in the soil and at the corm!

With the best
Joachim

bigdog

Joachim, that's interesting. I still think it might work here, because our soil never freezes (when I say never, I'm overlooking the 100 year events) below about 2 inches or so, rarely even below 1 inch. Last winter, we had one daytime high below 32F, and the winter before that there were no highs below freezing. So despite our zone designation as zone 7a, winters are actually pretty mild, even though we see some low temperature spikes at night several times per winter. We have seen four zone 8a winters in a row here also. N2tropicAL (Hayes) lives in a zone 8a in Alabama, and can grow twice the number of bananas that I can here, so I don't think hardiness will be too much of a problem for him. You never know though! Thanks for your experiences, Joachim! How large were the plants that you protected? Did the corm survive on any of them?

Basjoofriend

My plants were approx. 6 to 7 feet tall. Also the corm didn't survive despite of the basjoo winter protection.

With the best
Joachim