Help identify this tree

[bobe1967]

This was taken in Costa Rica. Someone thought is was a banana tree, but I don't see any idication of bananas?

 

[tomthetreeman]

That looks alot like a banana. They have palm-like leaves that get tears in them, resembling torn flags (to me anyway). Sometimes it takes years for trees to produce fruit, and sometimes they are selective about when they do it, as oaks are wont to be. My guess is that it is indeed a banana tree, despite the absence of fruit.

-Tom

 

[cerviarborist]

Looks like some kind of banana cultivar. It would be surprising to see that many banana plants in one spot, and none of them with fruit on them, unless there had been a recent freeze, or unless it was an ornamental variety which doesn't produce fruit. Most dessert bananas will make fruit within a year. Once they've fruited, that stalk will die. New recruitment to the patch comes from rhizomes.

Rhizomes pop up in two varieties: "Sword Suckers" that present just a couple very thin leaves and a conical growth aspect and which will produce fruit at maturity, and "Water Suckers" that grow immediately to look like miniature banana plants. The latter will not produce fruit.

Do you have any other photos?

 

[bobe1967]

Thanks. That is the only picture I have of it.