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ensete question
jadewilson81
Posts: 10
in Plants
Hi there I have a plant we bought from the garden centre about 3 years ago. It has done amazing untill this last winter just gone...
I looked up online what it is likely to be and see the closest thing to it is ensete family..
It looked to have died altogether after our long wet winter thus year. I stripped it back in the hopes it would help but it got worse and worse.. It really looked dead and was very squishy on the inside. The ends were black.
The decision to take it out was made.. Then I found at the bases new growth... I then planned to take the new shoots and pot them and keep them in a pot in my under cover area.
See below the plant in its prime, and under this what I am left with.
Any advice appreciated. Is it coming back do u think????
I looked up online what it is likely to be and see the closest thing to it is ensete family..
It looked to have died altogether after our long wet winter thus year. I stripped it back in the hopes it would help but it got worse and worse.. It really looked dead and was very squishy on the inside. The ends were black.
The decision to take it out was made.. Then I found at the bases new growth... I then planned to take the new shoots and pot them and keep them in a pot in my under cover area.
See below the plant in its prime, and under this what I am left with.
Any advice appreciated. Is it coming back do u think????
0
Posts
My first thought was a banana plant...Musa basjoo
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b&biw=1920&bih=949&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=gNUJW-KUMYPOgAbq3IOYDA&q=musa+basjoo+banana+plant+uk&oq=musa+basjoo+banana+plant+uk&gs_l=img.12...0.0.0.8558.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0....0...1c..64.img..0.0.0....0.65gfeEeLdBc
Ensete ventricosum maurelii has red leaves.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ensete+ventricosum+'maurelii'&client=firefox-b&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjvxf_mraTbAhUNV8AKHc3uBygQ_AUICygC&biw=1920&bih=943
Quote wiki.....Ensete ventricosum is a large non-woody plant — a gigantic monocarpic evergreen perennial herb (not a tree)— up to 6 m (20 ft) tall. It has a stout pseudostem of tightly overlapping leaf bases, and large banana-like leaf blades of up to 5 m (16 ft) tall by 1 m (3 ft 3 in) wide, with a salmon-pink midrib.
Did your plant have salmon pink mid ribs.?
It was the right decision to cut back to ground as the stems would have rotted otherwise. It seems that most, if not all, of the existing stems are alive - see how the centre 'rings' are pushing up? That's new growth coming through
Even if you did lose some stems, the rhizome is hardy and they will reshoot from the rhizome underground.
A word of caution, don't remove and pot on any new shoots until they are over 12" tall, they won't have enough root system to survive and even then they will struggle for a while from transplant shock. You'll need to use a sharp shovel - there are helpful YouTube videos on transplanting banana suckers that I'd recommend for guidance before you start.
Where do you live Jade, surely not in the UK? I wish my Musa Basjoo looked that good!
I will leave them then and see what happens.
Yes we are the UK.. Yorkshire... I was very upset they didn't survive this winter as they really did get amazing and got lots of complements. They survived the 2 before but this one was a particularly bad and longer one.
I started with 3 and ended up 6.
I can only hope they get as good as they once were. But I'm sure that will take time now.
It seamed the right thing to do to chop back as they were rotting
I'm no gardener... I play at it.. But really not a clue what I'm doing. But I love doing it.
Thanks again for your reply
I mulched and wrapped mine, they survived last year but didn't make it through this winter - some signs of life though - found two new shoots coming through this morning
I did the same this year but maybe left the leaves longer than usual.. It did its usual and started to show signs of life but then we had another bout of snow.. Followed by a long wet spell.. This really has been a long winter.....
It was my husband who chose them think they were £7 each... But they took amazing they weren't even a meter tall when we bought them...
She expected I would have wrapped them...
I had ferns years ago.. Amazing things they were. One was 5 ft tall base and the leave towered over us they other a couple of ft.. The year I wrapped them they died... And we were gutted, to get the height of fern we had from a garden center cost near £150.... We paid £80 and £40 for the small one.. They were truly a bargin... So I've been cautious to wrap anything again!!!