I would not remove the 6.5 tall one because cutting off a banana, no matter how careful you are, always stresses a plant. A stressed plant will affect the flowering and fruiting. Almost any time is a good time to separate pups except when they are flowering. If the further away sword pups are close to the surface, you can remove them if you would like. You just don't want to mess with the mother corm that is attached to the 7ft plant. How cool that you inherited a backyard with a fruit farm. Z

Banana Palm... ah yes. What a magical wonderful plant that would be. The best of both worlds. That reminded me of an episode of "The Simpsons" where the little girl Lisa declares she's a vegetarian and her dim-whitted father questions her: Homer: Wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute. Lisa honey, are you saying you're *never* going to eat any animal again? What about bacon? Lisa: No. Homer: Ham? Lisa: No. Homer: Pork chops? Lisa: Dad! Those all come from the same animal! Homer: [Chuckles] Yeah, right Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal. Ha.... -Todd

First off (not to sound petty) but palms and bananas are two different plants. It's like calling an apple an orange, simply because it's fruit picked from a tree. The two terms shouldn't be combined. Sorry, that's my peice on that. Now for the question at hand. You can wait until frost hits the foliage and needs to be removed. Cut the pseudostem back to a managable height (3'-4') and mulch with dry leaves in a wire cage. Cover with poly and remove once spring arrives. If these plants are well established, winter protection isn't nessesary really. They'll just freeze out to ground level and return to full splendor in the following season. I'm not 100% certain M. sikkimensis is as hardy. That one may need mulching just to be sure. Cheers, Barrie.

Thanks for the response. If it is an Orinoco, it has come back each year after 6 winters in the ground. It comes up in late spring, but makes up for it with growth, outgrowing the rest of my perennial bananas every year. The leaves are much nicer, but the tallest it's reached in any year was 8 feet. It holds up to frost pretty well.