What about having it blessed before you bring it onto your property or burying a charm with with?

Just a thought.

Katie

No, there aren't any plants that I can think of that I wish I had but can't plant.

That Pontianak story is interesting, but IMO enlightened rational thought trumps superstition. Thank goodness we don't burn books or torture/kill people who are believed to be witches or heretics anymore. There is plenty of mystery about the spiritual nature of life, however that mystery doesn't include such things as vampires and Pontianaks. Those are figments of the human imagination.

Do you really believe bananas will attract evil spirits? The worst I've heard about bananas is that they are great habitat for deadly poisonous spiders in tropical climates.

"Do you really believe bananas will attract evil spirits?"

No, I don't. But having grown up in an environment where that legend is "common knowledge" makes that feeling of unease difficult to shake. Rational doesn't easily trump ingrained psychological ideation. It's like telling an Arachnophobic to just step on the spider the next time he/she sees one.

No, it isn't easy to overcome strong emotional responses to things, engrained or not. If it were easy, I think we would be a much better behaved species! :)

I consider myself a rational human being for the most part. However I love "scary" movies (not the slasher types, but the good old haunted house, vampire, gothic ghosts, evil spirits types). My rational mind knows that it is only a movie. However, when the character inevitably looks up into the bathroom mirror and suddenly someone/thing jumps up behind him or his skin begins to peel off etc., I am fully prepared for these old cliches...I grab a pillow, put it over my face, and ask my DH what's happening. It's in the marrow of our bones, not in our brains that we all operate on some primitive level....And to keep it on topic...Delphiniums and Russell Lupines. Oh, I wish........

Love those beautiful California sages! But they definitely don't work in clay soil in Missouri.

Deanna

Azaleas and Dogwood trees. So beautiful in the spring in the south!

Bonnie

Hi Joe, if you really want to, I think you still can you mind power to overcome the legends. You might not change overnight, but you can probably overcome it given some time.

Just think of it this way, there are so many people who grow banana, and they have no problem, so it should be ok. Then look at some lovely Chinese brush paintings. They have garden pictures with bananas too. Then when you visit those gardens, stay by the banana trees for a long time and tell yourself "see, there is nothing. It is just a plant." After a while, that fear will reduce and hopefully go away one day, but you have to keep doing the above because it is a psychological thing and not just logical thing.

I grew up in Indonesia. Banana trees are just so abundant that you see bananas just everywhere. I lived in a city area but still, lots of bananas popped up here and there and many near my house. When you are surrounded by bananas like that, no legend can affect you anymore.

And also remember there are so many legends like that in Asia. It is just a matter of knowing it or not. If you happen not to know about the Pontianak legend, then you would feel quite fine; but there are legends about cats, willow trees, the moon, just about anything.

Or think about this, when we were children, sometimes because of stories or scary movies that we watched, there was always a fear around graveyard. Maybe this carries over after we are grown up and depends on what our belief is. But when I was small, cemeteries were mysterious and scary to me (especially those huge tombs in Indonesia); but one time I visited a relative of mine. They live in a poorer area by a cemetery. So their children (my cousins) played in the cemetery. They ran around, jumped over, climbed over the tombs! That itself somehow affected me because when I left their place, I remember I was thinking, "huh, maybe it is not that scary afterall."

I like banana too but it is too cold for Michigan. If climate permits, I would love to have papaya and mango first before banana though.

What a horrible, awful, dreadful, disrespectful way to treat the body and memory of a woman who has died bringing forth new life. Now the feminist in me is coming out ... how can any woman stand for the proliferation of such degrading nonsense? Sheeesh.

Nevertheless, I just got up and closed the drapes ... I have a potted banana tree out there, given to me by a fellow gardener. Alas, it's winter hardy here, so what am I to do now? LOL.

Highalttransplant, you can't grow azaleas and dogwoods? They are lovely and I would miss them terribly. But I'll bet you can grow delphiniums ... I'd love to have those in my garden, but it's just too hot and humid here.

Actually, I thought of something I wish I could grow but can't...Lavender! I've tried for 3 years, in 3 different spots, with 3 different types of lavender. The first plants were some that I brought from my previous house, they were started from seed many years before and grew great at that house. But they didn't survive the move here. Bought new plants the next 2 years, and they never make it through the winter. What's up with that?? Maybe I will try one more time, winter-sowing it this next spring.

Highalttransplant, can you grow some of the dogwoods native to the mountains of California (like Nutallii?), and there are some hardy deciduous azaleas as well that might work. Surely there are some of both species that would grow for you?

Of course, if you're really high up, you can grow some of those alpines that almost no one else can grow, plus more species of the blue poppies.

--Ron

Ron, it's not just the issue of hardiness, but that azaleas prefer a more acidic soil, which we don't have here. I tried growing a couple as houseplants, but the alkaline water eventually did them in.

The Cornus Nuttallii, or Pacific Dogwood, is only listed hardy to zone 7. The Red Twig Dogwood, which is more of a shrub and not near as pretty as the trees I grew up with, will grow here, though they are overused, and quite weedy looking to me.

I'm only at 5,500 ft elevation, so not quite high enough for some of those alpine plants, though I do get to enjoy them on occasional hikes in the mountains.

Yes, Gardenstateof mind, delphiniums do well here, though I don't have any in my garden.

We DO tend to want what we cannot have though, don't we?

Bonnie

"Hi Joe, if you really want to, I think you still can you mind power to overcome the legends. You might not change overnight, but you can probably overcome it given some time." Dave in Michigan

Do I want to? Not really. I don't need a banana that much. I am just as happy satisfying my craving for plants by getting something else - like bamboos.

Banana trees are every where in our home town too. But seldom close to a residential home. And you are less likely to find someone having a smoke at night under a banana tree, than a coconut tree!

I will accept life's dictum - one can't have everything.

they are great habitat for deadly poisonous spiders in tropical climates

If this is actually true, then it could well be the source of the legend. Stories like that don't usually come from nowhere. Maybe there aren't any pontianaks per se, but there is nevertheless a good reason to be careful around bananas (at least ones growing in the tropics)!

Me, I hanker after daphnes, but my soil is too heavy, and moisture too uncertain, to satisfy these lovely, fragrant shrubs.