The Porcheys' South Florida - Banana Development Web Pages..... |
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We have two varieties of banana tree in our yard here in southern Florida. The taller variety, which grows to about 12' tall, Started to produce it's bananas on September 1, 2000. The shorter variety, which grows to about 5' tall, began to produce it's bananas on september 15, 2000. I have taken photographs of the development of the bananas on the taller tree and placed them on these web pages for you to see as the bananas grew and ripened. It is now November 26, 2000 as I create this page and the taller bananas are just about ready to harvest. The mother plant is beginning to turn yellow and shows signs of weakness. For fear that the plant may fall and damage the banana crop I may have to cut off the fruit soon. There is also one photo of the shorter banana tree, on page 3, that shows the full group of bananas on that tree. I hope your enjoy this photo journey into the development of a banana as much as we have. Feel free to download the photos I have placed on these pages for your own use. |
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| This is our Tall banana tree, the shorter one is in the front. | The large purple bulb is the flower that will hold the developing little banana fingers. |
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| As the flower grows larger it begins to descend. | The flower bud begins to open. As each petal of the flower pulls away it exposes and new "hand" of little bananas. Each "hand" contains about 12-14 bananas. |
| Note: A banana plant grows to full maturity and then produces it's bananas. During it's growth period there are more banana trees that begin to show up at the base of the original tree. These new trees develop from underground runners from the mother plant. Our original 12' tree has a "baby" plant that is also now taller than the mother which is bearing bananas at this time. This took about 1 year to develop fully. Since these plants continue to produce offspring at the rate of 2 or more per tree, you can see that you can have a banana jungle fairly rapidly. We will most likely remove the trees that have borne fruit after the harvest since the plant usually dies after producing it's fruit and we have limited room in the corner of our yard. |
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