Anybody know about availability of seeds or reasonably priced live plants of this (apparently) rare banana? I have found someone in Georgia who has VERY expensive plants in 5 Gal. containers, but really can't justify that kind of expense.

Thanks!

I wish you could get seeds for M. ae ae, but it produces seedless fruit. Even if it did produce seeds they wouldn't have the white varigation.
White varigation is really rare and it can't be tissue cultered so it is even more rare. The funny thing is if a normal banana is tissue culture enough you eventually get a varigated one. I heard of some Ensete ventricosum 'maurelli' that also had white stripes(from tissue culturing so much).
I hope this helped.

Thanks for the quick (but sad) info. However, now I find that several variegated Basjoo cultivars are being worked with. That is very encouraging! Does anyone know if there are any in the US?

I haven't heard of more than one basjoo varigated, but I guess that is possible with all the tissue culturing.
I don't think these would be available readily, but there is a nursery in Oregon that is trying to tissue culture it, but they keep saying " It will be ready in two years", for the last few years. I guess they are figuring out HOW to tissue culture a varigated banana.
I called them, and they said it will be ready for a world wide release in 2007, but then I Emailed and asked if it will be available locally sooner, and they said that there was no planned release at all(still in developement). So I really don't know if they have figured it out or are just blowing hot wind. I hope they figure it out though.

Greetings!

Late reply, naturally.

There is no variegated Basjoo. Ae-Ae can easily be reproduced by tissue culture in Agar solution with the right equipment and proper demand in the market. The variegation in Ae-Ae is directly affected by soil pH---too alkaline and the color turns green. Maximum color is achieved by more acid pH.

Mark Anthony

Actually there are several forms of Variegated Musa basjoo now, but hardly available. There is even variegated Musa sikkimensis.
Go to bananas.org and join up since members there regularly share pictures of their varigated bananas. Just yesterday someone posted pics of his bananas and one was a varigated Musa sikkimensis 'Red Flash'. It's in the cold hardy bananas forum, under the tread "hardy Musa list".
Anyways there have been many attempts (non successful yet) at Ae-Ae tissue culturing. It often sells for $200.00 for a pup on ebay, not many plants have that kind of demand.