sunfish

Goldfinger has bottle neck fruit ?

sunfish

sunfish

venturabananas

Looks like Goldfinger to me. Even documents produced by FHIA show them to sometimes be blunt ended, like those in the photo above. Sometimes they are more tapered and sometimes even a bit bottlenecked, based on photos from reliable sources.

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sunfish

Thanks . I had no idea what else they could be if not goldfinger.

TARS 18067 - Musa hybr. - FHIA-01 - Honduras
FHIA-01 | Promusa - Mobilizing banana science for sustainable livelihoods

sunfish

FHIA-01' plants are cold- and wind-tolerant and produce higher quality fruits in sub-tropical, than tropical, conditions. Maybe all the bottleneck fruit are from the tropics .

venturabananas

Seems like there's a similar thing that happens with Dwarf Brazilian: very bottlenecked when grown in the tropics but sometimes very little or no bottleneck in subtropical/temperate. And that variety is one of the parents of FHIA-01.

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robguz24

Tony, if you look at the pictures of the bud in the links you posted, they have a quite unique bud, which is kind of more fat at the top and heart-shaped, rather than elongated. Many pictures on this site seem to show something completely different, and makes me wonder if they are really goldfinger. The Kepler book points to that shape as being a clear sign of goldfinger.

In the Promusa 2nd pic, they don't really look bottlenecked.

My supposed to be goldfinger originally an agristarts GF so far may or may not be one, so who knows?

I agree with Mark, it seems some of the types I see here near the edges of the tropics look quite different than the ones for web sites and old books with Florida based pictures anyway. Then again I was selling at my farmer's market today and the guy across from me was again selling whole racks of DBs harvested probably 2-3 months too soon, and they were half the size and looked quite different than the ones I grow and harvest when ripening on the bunch. And since they weren't full the bottle neck was not as obvious.

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My micro-farm

Stay on my Big Island banana farm cottage

sunfish

Yes I was looking for some pix of the buds on my plants but haven't found any

sunfish

Found a pic of the bud. Definitely not a match

sunfish

Another one

sunfish

PR-Giants

Patent USPP8983

Variance in botanical details:

The banana plant and its fruit described above may vary slightly in detail due to cultural practices, soil types and climate conditions under which the variety may be grown; the present description is that of the variety grown under the ecological conditions prevailing on the FHIA experimental station hear La Lima, Honduras.

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venturabananas

This one shows the "right" male bud shape for FHIA-01 -- i.e., the heart-shaped, "high shoulders" bud.

Bud shape definitely can change some as the bud gets older.

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venturabananas

The typical shape that Rob mentioned is for the male bud, not the female, which is shown in this photo. Female bud shape isn't typically used in describing banana cultivars. I guess that's because it isn't as distinct or changes too much during development?

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venturabananas

For what it's worth Tony, if this is the Goldfinger that you used to grow and that you shared fruit with me, it had the right kind of taste for Goldfinger, slightly tart but not as tart as its parent, Dwarf Brazilian.

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sunfish

Yes this is the same one and the fruit was like you say.

PR-Giants

Dan should know if the FHIA-01 is supposed to have purple pedicels.



Bract imbrication is another thing to compare.


Yours and Gabe's bunches look very similar, especially if you disregard the colors
of the flowers and fruit shape.

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venturabananas

I'm pretty darn sure it is Goldfinger. Whatever it is, it's a quality banana from my perspective (flavor and I know if was a tough plant in your yard, from what you said). I'm disappointed in myself that I didn't follow through on getting a pup of it from you. The only Goldfinger I grew in my yard was that TC mutant that never made female flowers, so no fruit from it. It got the axe.

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venturabananas

I've noticed that flower color also seems to be affected by climate: in the non-tropical, cooler climate that Tony and I live in, the flowers seem to be more colorful than when grown in the tropics. I wonder if that is also true of the pedicels. Wouldn't surprise me. The fruit of some varieties (e.g., Brazilian, Manzano) also sometimes get a purplish color when young that I don't think typically happens in the tropics. You can see some of that in Jon's photos below:

Manzano


"Brazilian"

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