(Banana, Silk Banana)

Delicious dessert bananas, the Silk AAB Group includes upright, fast growing, ornamental tropical herbs (not trees) with large, flat, green leaves and fruits of a distinctive acidy, apple-like and sweet flavor. They are plump, round-tipped fruits that will have split skins once fully ripe with white flesh. Broadly speaking, these hybrid triploid bananas are readily affected by Panama disease, usually to their detriment. They are pantropically grown, only surpassed in cultivation by Cavendish AAA...

(Banana, Edible Banana)

Edible banana is an upright, fast-growing, tree-like perennial with large flat leaves and long pendulous flower spikes. The flowers give rise to a large crop of edible banana fruits in hands on this native of Southeastern Asia and northern Australia. This large herbaceous perennial forms a clump of plants, each flowering and fruiting only once before dying.

Banana plants love warm fertile soils with consistent moisture. Full sun exposures are best, a long growing season is required to set the...

Edible banana is an upright, fast-growing, tree-like perennial with large flat leaves and long pendulous flower spikes. The flowers give rise to a large crop of edible banana fruits in hands on this native of Southeastern Asia and northern Australia. This large herbaceous perennial forms a clump of plants, each flowering and fruiting only once before dying.

Banana plants love warm fertile soils with consistent moisture. Full sun exposures are best, a long growing season is required to set the...

(Banana, Dwarf Banana, Little Prince Banana)

This edible banana, ‘Little Prince,’ is a very dwarf selection of a species native to Southeast Asia and northern Australia. It is an upright, fast-growing herb (not a tree) with large flat leaves and long pendent flower spikes. The flowers give rise to a large crop of edible banana fruits in hands. This herbaceous perennial forms a clump of plants, each flowering and fruiting only once before it dies. The plant continually sends up new shoots, thus perpetuating the production of hands on more stalks.

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(Banana, Zebrina Banana)

The banana cultivar, ‘Zebrina’, is an upright, fast-growing, ornamental tropical tree-like herb with large, flat, green leaves that have stripes of maroon. The long, pendent flowers give rise to a cluster of small, inedible, maroon-colored fruits. This decorative, herbaceous perennial forms a clump of plants, each flowering and fruiting only once before dying, but it keeps on sending up new shoots to make new plants.

Banana plants love warm fertile soil with consistent moisture. Full sun exposures...

(Hardy Banana)

Of all the bananas, this is the most hardy and amenable to colder climates. Hardy banana or Japanese fiber banana is an evergreen, tree-like perennial native to Japan. Its immense, arching, paddle-shaped leaves have horizontal ribbed veins and lend a tropical look to the landscape. They remain evergreen year round in subtropical to tropical areas but are deciduous in more temperate regions. In summer, it bears pendent spikes of flowers in the axils of large, brown floral bracts. The flowers sometimes...

(Banana, Hairy Banana, Pink Banana)

The hairy banana’s upright clumps of big, bold green leaves are upstaged by its showy white and lavender-pink flowers and the velvety, pink fruits. This clumping, tender herbaceous perennial comes from northeastern India. Its leaves are long, oval, waxy, glossy and green with possible yellow or purple tones on their stalks. During the warm growing season, the upright flowerhead arises from the top of the stem, with bright, violet-pink bracts (petal-like leaves) around the many small, yellow and white...

(Chinese Yellow Banana)

Unique and star-like, the golden-yellow flowerhead of the Chinese yellow banana tops the thick stalk in an extended display across the warm season. Native to the montane valleys of Yunnan Province in China, it is a tender, herbaceous perennial. Its upright leaves are large, long and oval in shape, often dark green or slightly bluish green. The real flowers are small and yellow and are tucked into the creases of the large yellow bracts (petal-like leaves) atop the stem. Overall, the flowerhead looks...

(Lady Flower)

Sometimes called a pink-flowering summer poinsettia, Queen Sirikit satinbush bears small starry yellow flowers that are overpowered by showy light pink, rose-edged modified leaves. Upright, multi-branched and mop-headed in its bushy canopy, it is a hybrid semi-evergreen shrub that is tender to frost. Named after the queen of Thailand, 'Queen Sirikit' is the result of crossing the west African Mussaenda erythrophylla with a selection of the Filipino Mussaenda philippica.

The...

(Flag Bush, White Mussaenda)

Barely glossed, crepe paper-like leaves are a soothing backdrop for flag bush's small orange flowers that are set off by a large white sepal. An evergreen tropical shrub that is sensitive to winter chill and killed by freezes, it is native to extreme southeastern Asia including Indonesia. It often becomes fully deciduous in winter when dry soil and cool temps reign.

The elongated, tapering oval leaves are medium green to yellow-green and tend to look weeping on the slender branches. Deeply veined,...