Yes, nothing to recommend it in flavor, aroma, or texture. Nice to look at.
Fun fact you may know, but for the benefit of all: if using it as a pollen source, the term is pollenizer. Pollinators are the bees and such who do the deed.
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An excellent pollinator tree— long bloom season. Fruit keeps well too.
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Can you link an article(s) here that mentions the study you’re referencing?
@Jujube I don’t have access to the full study, but I did link to the excerpt with highlights in a comment above. That’s the best I can do without buying the full research paper.
Regarding flavor:
While not the point of this post I did have the opportunity to taste ‘Winter Banana’ at a fruit show prior to starting my own trees. I liked it enough to be interested in growing it. The flavor is not going to wow anyone, but at the same time it’s not bad either. It’s just a nice neutral tasting apple with a hint of that old fashioned banana flavor (not the same as what modern ‘Cavendish’ bananas taste like). My tree started producing last year and I appreciated its ability to make blemish free fruit. I’ll look forward to having it around for many years.
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It’s a good keeper and nice looking .
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Anyone have more informal on using it as an interstem? I’m wanting to try it both on callery and on keiffer and then put Anna apple on top. What do you think?
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They used to be a famous Christmas apple, and the were supposedly the most expensive apples in England because they don’t ripen well in their climate and they had to import them from the US, they were a mandatory part of the Christmas fruit basket and if you didn’t include them you were considered poor, at least that’s what I heard.
So either they don’t store much longer than Christmas or that’s the best time to eat them, but considering they were the most expensive apples in England, I’m pretty sure they were refrigerated.
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I am adding summer banana… going to pass on winter banana i think.
Summer Banana isnt a good storing apple but for fresh eating…and supposedly one of the best frying apples.
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I believe I have grafted it on a Callery seedling, although it might be a strange hybrid and not pure Callary, the graft is growing well, but so is Crispen (Mitsu) and Cripp’s pink (or Mott’s pink I mixed up my labels or my pink flesh apple thinking).
I found, what appeared to be a thorny pear, maybe a weird Crabapple, but LeafSnap says it’s Bradford pear - that’s a cultivars of Callary.
The grafts on it are:
Crispen apple
Cripps Pink apple
Winner Banana apple
Apple-Pear Cross (That’s the name)
Clara Frijs pear
2 Asian pears of unknown varieties.
They’re growing great apples, a European pear, Asian pears, and an apparently apple - pear hybrid.
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Interesting information and how customs are from location to location. I think the apples I get off of my Winter Banana are very pretty. Bright yellow with the red blush. I agree with the person on the video about it being a good apple but not a “wow” apple. I use them in apple crisps and also to eat. I mainly use it as a pollinator. It works well as a pollinator in between my other apple trees.
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I ate my first winter banana yesterday off a young tree I planted two years ago. It is grafted onto Pacific (swamp) crabapple as it’s in a very wet location. I was actually impressed by the flavor, as I wasn’t expecting too much from it as many people say it’s not a great flavored apple.
I have a couple of winter banana trees grafted onto Pacific crab that in the long term I intend to multi graft with different varieties of apple and pear. I will definitely be grafting more WB onto Pacific crab rootstocks as malus fusca can grow in very wet or dry conditions. I will be using these trees with Pacific crab and winter banana (as an interstem) to hopefully grow pear in areas too wet for standard pear rootstock. I mainly purchased winter banana for use as an interstem or for grafting pears onto its upper framework.
I have no idea how well this will work as I haven’t actually grafted any pears onto winter banana yet. Hopefully my multi grafting experiments will go well. Time will tell.
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When used as an interstem, what rootstock ‘Winter Banana’ is grafted onto makes a big difference in terms of longevity of the pear grafted to it. Since M. fusca wasn’t included in the only ‘Winter Banana’ interstem graft longevity trial I’m aware of, your work is basically going to be bringing us all new data!
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Do you have a source/link for this trial data?
I currently have only 3 varieties of apple grafted to M Fusca. Mutsu which seems pretty slow growing on M Fusca, and Winter Banana which seems quite vigorous on M Fusca in comparison. I also have Goldrush grafted on M Fusca and it is in the middle of those 2 for vigor.
Thanks for your feedback @JohannsGarden .
I had the link in a comment higher up in the thread, but am reposting it here to make it easier to find.
Pear on winter banana interstem with m.26 apple rootstock as a compatible combination
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I do not have a Winter Banana, I have a Summer Banana Apple to fill the gap between June-July apples & October apples.
It’s an open access journal.
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How’s the Summer Banana as far as taste and keeping abilities? I had been looking at putting the Summer Banana in my orchard.
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Callery is a great rootstock in damp locations too, and an interstem could be used for dwarfing, if needed.
Also the M111 rootstocks are quite good in wet conditions as well.
The M111 rootstocks are also very good in drought conditions. We have had two summers in a row that have been horrible drough conditions ( this year no rain for 41 days) and the M111 all survived.
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