Banana Rhizome Mat

People usually call the group of banana plants emerging from a common rhizome a mat but some call it a clump and i sometimes think of it as a family.

Banana rhizome mat. A banana plant takes about 9 months to grow up and produce a bunch of bananas. Musa basjoo japanese fiber banana shipped only within the usa not for export. That rhizome continually sprouts up new banana plants. Banana plants are related to bird of paradise plants gingers heliconia and canna lilies.

At the base of a banana plant under the ground is a big rhizome called the corm. But around the base of it are many suckers little baby plants. Then the mother plant dies. Before you do this wait until the pups or suckers are at least 3 feet tall and have their own roots.

The corm has growing points and they turn into new suckers. It is a form of asexual or vegetative reproduction that makes the banana plant perennial. Suckers emerge and ensure a more or less continuous supply of shoots each capable of producing an inflorescence they have been used as planting material since the early days of. The root mass or mat of a banana plant includes the bulb rhizome suckers and roots themselves.

The banana is a fast growing plant consisting of one or more pseudostems upright trunk like structures formed by tightly packed concentric layers of leaf sheaths an underground rhizome and a fibrous root system. The entire plant is called a mat. In well drained loose soils the roots can reach up to 5 feet deep and spread up to 30 feet horizontally. In the mature plant this mat can grow five feet deep and spread over 30 feet.

These all grow from a spreading underground rhizome. Each banana mat was separated into mother plant rhizome pseudostem leaf stalk and fruit and daughter plant daughter rhizome daughter pseudostem and daughter leaf to determine the dry matter weight dmw and to estimate fruit production for the mother plant of each banana mat. A sucker is a shoot that develops from a lateral bud on the rhizome and emerges from the soil usually near the parent plant. The rhizome suckers and their fibrous roots form a mass of roots known as the mat.

Banana plants are more like giant stalks of grass that grow out of a bulb like base called a rhizome. A very cold hardy banana that can survive winter temperature of 15f when heavily mulched. The former are a better choice for propagating new plants. To divide banana plants separate the suckers or pups from the rhizome using a very sharp spade and quite a bit of strength.

After which the mat entire plant including pseudostems leaf sheaths rhizomes and roots should fruit every year from a new sucker. Clumping habit allows new plants to be borne.