Originally Posted by benbaron

Im so tempted to try one but with my climate.....

Originally Posted by benbaron

$100??

Originally Posted by robguz24

I have a list of people locally asking to buy them from me for $100. From what I understand that's actually a bargain for what they could be sold for on the mainland. So if someone is shipping them to the mainland for that little, that's a great deal.

Originally Posted by Richard

Not to mention steep pricing. That's a bubble that needs bursting. Maybe next year I'll start offering them at $40 each on my web site.

Originally Posted by planetrj

See, the thing is, I can completely understand pricing on a plant that is truly "rare", but I have 2 issues with this plant (sort of like Siam Ruby) when you go to certain places in Hawaii and you see them growing by the grove and sell for $10 each like it's no big deal, ya gotta think.. is this really such a big deal?

Originally Posted by harveyc

I have a friend that operates a nursery near Hilo who once said he could get Ae Ae easy for $10 but another friend in Kona that said they get snatched up quickly when offered for $50 and that they were scarce. The Hilo friend later said that our Mainland crazy had apparently dried up supplies and he doesn't see any around now. When Andrew when to Hawaii earlier this year he didn't find any at the nurseries he visited. Richard, have you actually confirmed that a wholesale source has the sort of quantities of Ae Ae that you are mentioning? It just doesn't agree with what others have told me.

Originally Posted by Richard

The basic story is that if you work with a wholesale nursery in Hawaii or similar, the Ae Ae's are shipped 120 to 190 per pallet depending on the source. The shipping works out to $1 or $2 per plant. If the source nursery has a standard U.S. nursery stock certificate and the shipping destination is in the U.S., then there is no need to pay for a phyto-certificate. The wholesale cost of the plants is currently under $20 each. It would be easy to flood the market with inexpensive Ae Ae's, and anyone here who sells plants is welcome to give it a try. The odds are better than blackjack.

Originally Posted by PR-Giants

I thought they'd be a $5 plant in Hawaii.....oops

Ae Ae Banana for sale

Originally Posted by Rmplmnz

I have seen many posts over the years predicting a precipitous drop in Ae Ae prices, personally I do not see this happening anytime soon. Some of the posts compare Ae Ae’s to Musella Lasiocarpa or Basjoo. This plant is different than Basjoo, Siam Ruby or Musella lasiocarpa, all of which have sold for very high price at one time or another, in that it has maintained this rarity and been priced very high (in relation to other bananas at the time) for over 25 years (to my recollection...most likely longer as this is when it first appeared on my radar).

Some posts have stated that there are groves of these bananas in Hawaii and that they are available for $10.

I have been to many of the large public gardens and many smaller gardens in Hawaii and the only garden I saw Ae Ae’s at was Waimea Falls on the North Shore of Hawaii and they were in a secured area behind a fence.

Where in Hawaii are there groves of this plant?

If I ever see a grove of Ae Ae's I am taking a picture so fast...

What nursery sells them for $10??

Post from 2007:
ae ae banana arrived

This banana is rare even in Hawaii.

This is evidenced by the fact that someone broke in to the Maui Nui Botanical Garden and stole some of them:

Rare Hawaiian banana plants stolen from garden
By LILA FUJIMOTO, Staff Writer
POSTED: September 13, 2006

KAHULUI – After losing about $1,000 in landscaping tools and supplies during break-ins over the Labor Day weekend, Maui Nui Botanical Gardens was hoping Tuesday to get back a half-dozen rare native Hawaiian banana plants.

The keiki plants of the manini variety, which has green-and-white striped leaves and fruit, were dug up from the garden at Keopuolani Park during the first break-in on Sept. 4, said Executive Director Lisa Schattenburg-Raymond.

After spreading the word about the thefts, she said she learned Tuesday that someone had sold similar plants to a local business. She spoke with a Maui police officer who planned to investigate further and recover the plants Tuesday afternoon.

“They are just so ornamental. People just go crazy over it,” Schattenburg-Raymond said. “They are the Hawaiian variety, which makes it even more interesting. It was reserved for alii.”

The garden had offered limited quantities of the banana plants for sale for the past three years, Schattenburg-Raymond said. She estimated the thefts had set back the sale production for two years.

The plants are difficult to grow, with some plants not surviving and others turning albino or all green, she said.

“What we’re trying to do is preserve these rare Hawaiian plants,” she said. “Even though we’re trying to make these available, people are stealing them.”

Because the rare and valuable banana variety was targeted, along with hand tools and pesticides, Schattenburg-Raymond said she suspects the thief was someone familiar with the garden and involved in the landscaping industry.

Also taken during the first break-in were five 70-pound bales of Sunshine No. 4 potting mix, some large pots and a large container of Roundup herbicide.

The following night, thieves broke through the doors of the garden pesticide shed and the tool shed, damaging the security gates, and stealing herbicide and pesticides, a drill, a new LL Bean camouflage wind-up radio and a wagon. An alarm at the gardens went off at 3 a.m.

Some of the stolen items were found in the wagon in bushes near Keopuolani Park and the Maui Arts & Cultural Center the next day, Schattenburg-Raymond said.

She said she has heard about other thefts of plants taken from homeowners as well as businesses.

Anyone with information on the break-ins and thefts is asked to call Maui Nui Botanical Gardens at 249-2798 or Maui police at 244-6400.

Lila Fujimoto can be reached at lfujimoto@mauinews.com.

Rare Hawaiian banana plants stolen from garden - Mauinews.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Visitor's Information - The Maui News

The nurseries that grow these bananas know the value.

I have contacted several Hawaiian nurseries that advertise them ($125 to $175 over the last 20 years and they rarely if ever have stock and when they put me on the wait list I never heard from them again. In 1994 I purchase an Ae Ae ($150 or so..can’t quite recall) from Pacific Tree Farm just outside of San Diego (it met a dire end from my dog). In 1995 I purchased an Ae Ae from Gong Bananas ($150 or so can’t quite recall). At the time they had a nice planting in a raised bed; they have since removed the Ae Ae from their catalog and reduced their planting to one large matte. In speaking with Don Chafin he has said that they are just too difficult to grow and that many of the pups turned green. Don actually gave me a green Ae Ae that I potted up and amazingly it went variegated. In 1998 I made a trip to San Diego and visited the only two nurseries that I knew of that currently or had stocked Ae Ae, Pacific Tree Farm and Exotica. All of the Pacific Tree Farm’s bananas were in pots, they had just one Ae Ae matte growing in a single pot. The person I spoke with said that they did better in the pots due to the poor drainage of the soil where the nursery was located (California clay). Exotica did not have any Ae Ae’s. Yes I know this was a loooonnng time ago and there are other Southern California nurseries that offer them (kudos to Andrew for his awesome fund!); they are just not commonly for sale at nurseries (California, Hawaii or Florida).

Going Bananas Ae Ae matte (April 2008).

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Going Bananas Raised Ae Ae bed (Fall 1994)
[IMG][/IMG]

My first Ae Ae pup
Going Bananas Homestead, FL Fall 1994
Going Bananas had a raised bed with Ae Ae's. They actually still had them in their catalog with a manageable wait list (about a tenth of the size of today's Viente Cohol list). Each pup was labeled with nursery tape with the future owner's name on it.
[IMG][/IMG]


Ironically all of the Ae Ae’s I have purchased (three) died. I have had the most success with the two that were given to me. The green one Don gave me eventually died (it made it through several generations over six years the last plant had bananas and no pups). The one I am currently growing I need to return a pup (or two/three) to the member that passed it on to me and hopefully one day participate in the expansion of the plant within board membership.

I hope the board members’ successes continue (come on Richard and JNS!!) and that every board member that wants to grow one has the opportunity to. I just do not see this banana becoming readily available in large quantities (at any price) anytime soon.

Thanks to all the great tips (Richard, Nanaman, JNS and others) that I have recently read on the board I am hoping to improve my plants and expand the planting of this great plant.

Originally Posted by robguz24

Groves of them here, lol!

I've probably seen a dozen in 8 years and only for sale twice, once with a single plant that I bought. Some of the Hawaiian-centric botanical gardens have some growing. Given how common they seem to be on the org you're probably more likely to randomly come across one on the mainland than in Hawaii.

Originally Posted by PR-Giants

It always seems that folks on the org prefer to overlook the obvious. It's just not a good banana, if it was pups would be selling for less than a dollar. oops.........now Hybrid jumps in and says 'Don told me it was one of his favorites"....or.... Nick saying "hundreds of anonymous people find me on the internet and want to order pallets of them"


If they were a quality fruit, farmers would grow them, consumers would buy them and there would be tons of unwanted pups.

Originally Posted by robguz24

"Reserved for Hawaiian Royalty" is another lol that is widely repeated but untrue.