I had had one of the same thoughts as you about banana skirts – possible protection from too much sun – but I hadn’t thought about the mulch idea to suppress competition. Of course bananas want their “babies” (that’s what they call the young shoots here) to survive, and those shoots are quite close to the “mother” stalk, but the skirts might supress grass and other weeds. Good idea.

Also, the Geranium maderense story is intriguing. Thanks for relating it.

The question on the leaves is interesting. In the case of Musa, as I understand it, although the lamina dies, the petiole persists to form part of the “stem” so the leaf (or part of it) remains for quite some time.
But is their a role for the leaf skirt? I’d assume this is a natural state so there might not be any significance in it’s persistance, but some beneficial roles might be
1) Thermal insulation – protecting the “stem” from too much sun or cold for that matter.
2) Mulch around base to suppress competition
but I’m just guessing…

This abstract seems to suggest that leaf persistance in Cordyline is linked to insulation from the cold. Here in Australia, Xanthorrhea (Grass trees) retain thier leaves and this helps insulates their stems from the heat of fires.

Working in a nursery about ten years ago I observed a rather interesting leaf skirt in Geranium maderense. It’s usually biennual and the hypocotyl tends to be a bit spindly. However as the rosette develops the thick petioles of the older leaves are pushed down onto the soil. As the plant gets larger these old leaves effectively form a series of props to hold the plant stable. When it flowers it produces a rather huge infloresence all supplied with water by a hypocotyl barely thicker than a pencil. From what I observed it seems to avoid toppling over because of it’s skirt.
A rather cool trick, I thought.

Anyway I’d be interested to know if functions for this skirt are known.

I’m so glad you mentioned the taste, and your experiences with local bananas. I sometimes, more often than I should, actually, wear blinders and see only a narrow portion of something I’m looking at. Good to have a broader view.

Wayne – I was surprised, too. Now that I’m in Panama, though, where bananas are such an important part of the cuisine, I have a thought about that. Green bananas – not plantains, but green bananas – are sold in larger numbers here than sweet bananas, known as dessert bananas. The green ones are cooked like plantains and are used as a starch. I can see cultivating a starch like this because you can use it immediately, without grinding or any other processing.

Another common starch here, yuca (cassava or manioc), is also cultivated by cloning and was also domesticated very early. I could get carried away by the idea of cloning vs seed propagation as the earliest agricultural technique except I read somewhere that the orange was in fact the very earliest domesticated food!

Andee