They call me double-yellow...

by James K. Sayre

"They call me double-yellow..." Double-bananas growing in the Rockridge district of Oakland in coastal California? When I purchased a pair of two-foot high Banana plants at Navlett's Nursery in Pleasant Hill four years ago, I only dared hope for some nice large wavy banana leaves in the side yard, to add a tropical touch to my garden. I purchased two different varieties: a Musa 'Orinoco' and a Musa 'Miss Luki.' After being transplanted, they remained basically unchanged for the first year; in the second year they began to shoot up; in a couple of years they were both about ten feet high with impressive large leaves. It was fun to water them with the garden hose and pretend that I was living in a tin-roofed shack on a tropical isle... Each winter with the cold and faint light and breezes, many of the leaves turned brownish and shredded. But in the spring, they grew with renewed vigor and even produced several side shoots around the main stem.

This spring, the larger Banana plant, the 'Orinoco' suddenly produced a very large, odd-shaped purplish-brownish growth. It finally dawned on me that it was flowering. Having never seen a Banana plant flower in person, I checked several botanical reference books for details. Its flowers were small, but were soon followed by several bunches of small green bananas. They tallied up to about five dozen by a rough count and were clustered on the upper third of the thick, three-foot-long flowering stalk. The second Banana plant, the 'Miss Luki," followed suit, but produced only four bananas.

When the flowering part of the Banana plant first appeared, it was very alien looking;part of me had an atavistic urge to just chop it down and destroy it; fortunately, I repressed that reactionary urge and just continued to observe Mother Nature at work.

Back to the double-yellow. After several months, I noticed a slight glint of yellow at the top of the uppermost bunch. I got out the ladder, since the topmost bananas were about seven feet off the ground. I harvested the yellow bananas, were numbered two or three, depending on how you counted the double-banana, which was two bananas that had fused together. That is something that you will rarely, if ever see in grocery store bananas. These bananas are short and fat, about the size of the finger bananas. Their flavor is a little more pungent, though. But you can grow bananas in the Rockridge district of Oakland, California. Wonders never cease...

End.

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This web page was recently created by James K. Sayre.

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Web page last updated on 6 February 2008.