Here's a shot of the 4 Musa saba's with pups.

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They do sucker quite a bit. I would let it be, and then separate the pup when you plant in the ground, or move to a larger pot. Saba is NOT wind resistant. However, as long as the leaves are green, they are functional and should be left alone. My Saba almost never has a vertical leaf. The winds here always seem to blow right after a new leaf emerges. The height of Saba makes it difficult to wind shelter as well. The leaves are about the size of a good size surfboard.

After about a week after the pups emerging, it looks like those 2 saba's are concentrating on the pups, with nothing happing to the main plant, while the two pup-less plants keep pushing out new leaves.

You could cut the pups down to soil level, but don't cut the corm, if you want to concentrate growth on the main stalk. You'll have to prune them back periodically though, as they will still grow. Cutting them off of the main corm could set back the mother stalk a little. Why not just let them grow? It's not like you have lots of pups to worry about yet, just one. That way if something was to happen to the main stalk, you'd still have a pup there.

I'm not complaining, or cutting anything. I just observed that the main plant seems to have stopped, or paused, while the pups come up.

Continuation of the series.

Note how the main corm on the right as completely withered away, while putting up two pups.

The corm on left has put up two pups, and now finally has started to put out a leaf from the main corm, too:

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The middle two corms have put up no pups, but have the most vigorous growth from the original corm.

In a couple weeks, I'll be up-potting these expected eventual monsters from 3-gal to 27-gal containers. Wouldn't want to hamper their growth. :)

I will pay you for one of those pups. I've been looking for Saba for a little while now.

Chitown

Those don't look like Sabas. My Saba is totally green. No coloration, or splotches on the leaves at all.

I agree, I have never seen a Saba with such red coloration in the pseudostem and red splotches on the leaves. Are you sure they are Saba?

Here is a pic of one of my Saba pseudostems. They have all been pure green (leaves also).
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My "M. saba" plants are also purple under the leaves.

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I bought the plants at bananaaa-treee.com.
I've asked b-t about the variegation.

'My "M. saba" plants are also purple under the leaves.'

Right, we're saying that normal Sabas are NOT purple anywhere.

Thats usually an of indication acuminata parentage, however Saba is either (BBB), or (ABB) (conflicting info), although Im pretty it is (BBB), so that would mean 100% balbisiana, wich means not that much red, especially on the abaxial (back) side of the leaves.

I called bananaaa-treee.com (the correct spelling is blocked by this forum software).

b-t agreed that I did not receive M.saba and didn't know what it was I received! They agreed to send me 4 new M. saba. whew!!

Now, anybody want to take a guess at ID'ing these four plants? :)

thanks

Could very well be a zebrina variety.

They are still nice looking bananas. I would have prefered Saba too though.

So you're getting 4 bananas for free then??

"So you're getting 4 bananas for free then??"

That's what the guy on the phone said. He didn't say when he would have more in, so I will have to follow up in a couple weeks.

I also got a free $40 Queen palm from Wal-mart since one of the two I bought was infested with huge grubs that were eating the roots. I showed them the grubs and the rootlessness and floppiness of the Queen palm, and they gave me another one.

I've re-potted the grubby palm, added some anti-grub/slug/snail poison as a precaution, and hope it resumes growth. It clearly fell way behind the other Queen of the same height and number of fronds that it was purchased with.

baanaanaa-tree.com came through, sent me 4 more plants, got them yesterday. Now to see if they really come up as M. saba

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how are your sabas doing? rob

I bought a SABA from Going Bananas a few years ago and all the pups have red pseudostems but NO red on the leaves.

Terry

My sabas are doing ok. A few weeks ag0, I took them, (and my other bananas), out of 95F full-sun here to give them a chance to get going.

Even in good heat, water, and partial shade, the sabas aren't going as fast as saba supposedly goes, nor as fast my Blue Java or Maurellis started. I put the sabas in 1-gal containers when I received them first week of June, and they aren't showing any roots out of the bottom, but all 4 of them are putting up leaves (with no wine color this time).

Here are my 4 baannaan-tree replacement saba's, about 6 weeks after potting them:

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and here are the 4 mystery Musa's sent initially in error:

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Hey, just saw this thread when searching for saba info. I bought a bare root saba about 2 years ago and now have 3, it had 2 pups about 6 months ago. The first year the banana didnt grow much, but this year is now about 12ft. high.

The main reason for my post is I believe the mystery bananas are musa bordelon, a pretty common banana around northern california, sometimes just referred to as "red banana". I bought one of those about 2 years ago as well and the thing pups like mad, have about 20 clumping now. They are similar to zebrina or blood bananas but get about 10 ft. high. Here's a couple pics...

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Theres about 12 good size bordelons and at least 10 more pups coming up right now.

ok,thanks, yours sure like mine, so Musa bordelon it is, for now.
Mine are getting to about 3-ft in 3-gal pots. If they get to 10 ft in the ground next year, that will be another indication of Musa bordelon.

M. bordelon is rated zone 8-9, and up to 14 ft. Do yours die back to the ground?

thanks

Yeah the bigger bordelons completely died and didnt grow back, the smaller pups actually did better and thats what you see now.

The saba did good, leaves died but rest of plant was fine and it started growing in spring where it left off. It's about 8" in diameter now and grows very fast, the newest leaf is about 6ft long.