Musa Species, Hairy Banana, Pink Fruiting Banana

Beautiful, neon pink bananas and a shrub-statured plant. Made it through -11 Fahrenheit in the freakishly cold winter we had last year in...Read More zone 7b SE Virginia. Had an 8-inch thick layer of mulch.

We live at 4000 feet on the side of Haleakala on Maui and this was growing already when we moved into our house. It is prolific with no s...Read Morepecial care at all. The fruits have never ripened enough to be edible (maybe technically but not functionally, too astringent), I am wondering if anyone can tell me if the flowers are edible. Thank you!

Lovely plant and easy to grow, although germinating the seeds was a bit of a challenge. Two seeds germinated out of 10, but once they did...Read More, it was full steam ahead. Now in their fourth year, the plants are about 5' tall and have several trunks each. This being Zone 6, I keep them in tubs (they go well with trailing coleus) and bring them indoors each winter.

This year the plants fruited for the first time and I am trying to save seed, but I suspect I haven't let the fruits ripen enough. I tasted one of the fruits and it was very tough and astringent, not at all sweet. I'm wondering if I can just pry the seeds out and let them dry, or if I have to go through a process similar to saving tomato seeds (ferment seeds and pulp, pour off mold, rinse and dry).

I bought this interesting banana plant from a nursery 12 years ago and planted it in my ginger "garden" near a natural spring in my lower...Read More backyard. The banana did great & has spread. I now have about 4 - 5 clumps that come back year after year. They fruit in mid-late summer, producing small, pink bananas. The fruit is sweet, but quite full of seeds. Adds a wonderful tropical touch. Easy to grow but likes moist areas. Freeze back in the winter during hard-freezes but will come right back when the weather warms up. Will grow in part to filtered sunlight. My plants get mid-afternoon sun, the rest of the day they get filtered sunlight.