This is why I garden!

I want to share a photo with you. I can’t help but be happy when I see something of this magnitude in my own garden.

This leaf belongs to a Musa basjoo, the hardy fiber banana. It measures about 5 feet in length! It is the biggest leaf in my garden. Coming in at a close 2nd is the Paulownia tomentosa, Empress tree. The biggest leaves on it are not quite as long, but much wider.

For our 3rd runner up, I would award the prize to Gunnera manicata, or dinosaur food. I have a feeling that it may soon pass the empress tree up. It probably would have already, if the first large flush of leaves hadn’t been so severely damaged by earwigs and slugs.

The honorable mention goes to a pair of plants. Colocasia ‘Thailand Giant’ is still working on it, but it is getting ready to put out some leaves that are absolutely massive.

It lives in a 2 foot pot, and that new leaf is just the curly tip of a new leaf. The 2nd half of the honorable mention is the entire collection of Canna musifolia (banana canna) in the garden. For a canna, the leaves are gigantic! I’ll have to edit this post after I take a current picture.