While we were still living in Mosman Park a friend gave us as banana plant. We popped it in the front garden but it never did very well (perhaps too close to strong sea breezes, who knows) and when we moved to where we are now we decided to take it with us.
We planted it in the back garden near a huge lemon tree that was already there and the banana grew beautifully and we were rewarded with many large bunches of bananas. These bananas were not the type you normally find in the shops here, but were in fact lady fingers or sugar bananas. Whatever their name, they were delicious. Photos one and two were taken in 1989 and the third earlier in 1987. You can actually see a few of the lemons in the first picture.
In the above photo I am standing in front of an elderberry tree. Phil had planted it with the idea of making elderberry wine (as they did in the good old days in England) but, although it flowered ... which you can see in the photo, it didn't set any berries. We realised that perhaps cross pollination was needed so no elderberry wine for us as we only had the one tree. I think eventually either the elderberry tree became poorly or Phil just gave up as I know that tree finally disappeared.
In these two photos (which I borrowed from a website about sugar bananas) it shows more clearly how the plants multiply and also where bananas are forming above the flower with baby bananas just forming lower down.
