Annie will translate it for you, whats the URL?

The above followup was added by Jason on December 27, 2002 at 0:47 am PST.

Hi Jason,

I thought I'd already put the adress in! Its at;

http://www.sica.gov.ec/agronegocios/productos%20para%20invertir/frutas/babaco/principal.htm

Got any growth on those bananas yet?

The above followup was added by Ben on December 27, 2002 at 2:12 am PST.

The fruit is without seed, it doesn't need polinization to develop, it is an elongated pentagon shape, normally 20 cm long and 6 cm in diameter. It weighs between 300 and 1,200 grams. On one plant you can find fruit of diferent sizes. The number of fruits vary from one plant to another because it produces them as it grows and when they're mature they are yellow. The pulp is cream colour, watery and with a special smell Mostly when it's mature. It's flavour is similar to a pinapple a strawberry and an orange. The picking season will be 10 to 12 months after planting and it goes till the 36th month or longer. If it's in a greenhouse it'll produce fruit after the 16th month but but it can produce 32kg of fruit per square meter with a density of 0.8 plants per square meter.

The Babaco plant is one of the diferent "mountain papayas", in reality there are lots more similar cultivars, some of them are species like carica stipulata (siglagon), C monoica (bush papaya), C goutodiana (papalluelo) etc.

All of them are similar to the tropical papaya and aparently they are similar also in the planting requirments, which gives us a big range of similarities in between each one of them, so it becomes potentially possible for genetic combinations with subtropical species like C papaya

Annie :)

The above followup was added by Annie on December 27, 2002 at 8:43 am PST.