ryan

Could we perhaps do up an informative list of the cultivars of the ornamental musa ornatand the different bract colors? it would really be useful. there seems to be many overlaps as well eg Musa ornata 'Royal Burgundy' is the same as 'Royal Purple'. etc..

Gabe15

This is taken from a post I made last year sometime. I know some of the terms in there you may not know, but all of the definitions are available online. And although this wikipedia page is riddled with errors, its a decent basic start Musa (Musaceae - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)





It is always mixed up in the trade, and pretty much all new Rhodochlamys (and sometimes Callimusa species too) plants are given the name Musa oranta 'whatever', I think because M. ornata is a popular plant, and catchy too (ornata=ornate, ornamental), so they began calling everything ornata (even though some already had valid scientific names long before they went into cultivation).

Musa ornata in reality is just one plant, it has green fruit and a pale pinkish bud, it however is actually an interspecific hybrid of M. velutina and M. flaviflora, however it is still treated as a valid species because it acts like a species, has wild populations and all that stuff (perfectly capable of true to type sexual reproduction).

Most others are hybrids of unknown origin, but they are not wild species and many are sterile due to their hybrid nature. The only other common ones that can confidently be identified as a valid wild species are Musa laterita (known as ornata 'Bronze'), Musa gracilis (known as ornata 'Leyte White'), Musa siamensis ((not official) known as ornata 'Thai Gold'). There are also a few others but its hard to say exactly what they would be called in the nursery trade, as mentioned before everything is really mixed up but Musa rosea and Musa rosacea are most likely out there under the wrong name. There are also other species that are generally named correctly (such as velutina, mannii and rubinea(not official)) and there are yet others that are still not in cultivation. Musa 'African Red' is the correct name since it is a hybrid of unknown origin, definetly not a wild species.
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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

Dean W.

Gabe, you know your bananas man.

Dean

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