Product Description
A beautiful, high altitude banana from China's Yunnan Province and Arunachal Pradesh in India that has proven to be a very interesting cold tolerant species that will thrive under similar conditions as the legendary Musa basjoo and M. sikkimensis, even though not quite as hardy. It is a slender- stemmed, extremely fast growing plant with large leaves supported by waxy white leaf stalks. Some confusion surrounds the introduction of this banana into cultivation: It originally came to us misidentified as Ensete wilsonii, was subsequently thought to be Musa itinerans, as which we have had it in our assortment for a long time, and it now turns out to be a new species, described in 2007 by Markku Hakkinen as Musa yunnanensis. (RPS.com)
Musa yunnanensis, commonly known as either Yunnan banana or wild forest banana,[3] is a recently described plant in the banana and plantain family native to Yunnan in southern China. The type specimen was collected in 2005 in Xishuangbanna (an autonomous prefecture bordering on Indochina), at an elevation c. 1,150 meters.[1]
Although M. yunnanesis grows in montane tropical forest, it is both shade and frost tolerant, and sensitive to direct sunlight, and so is essentially an understory plant. Individuals typically reach about 5 – 5.25 meters in height at maturation. Bark on pseudostems is coated in wax that is white with a bluish cast. The upper surface of the leaves are also bluish, though their undersides are red hued.[3]
Musa yunnanensis has value to local wildlife; its summer fruits are consumed by birds, bats, and possibly elephants.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (wikipedia.com)
