Ensete ventricosum - Ethiopian banana

Great tropical looking banana from Ethiopia, the Ethiopian banana is seen frequently but less so than its red foliaged cultivar, 'Maursii'. I like this one with its distinct red midrib and its commonly wind damaged leaves. Best for tropical landscapes, growing with some protection to 20'.

Leaves are paddle-shaped, really narrowly elliptical, 8-10' long, with penni-parallel venation, petioles are red as is the midrib and usually the leaf margin. Petiole base is clasping around the stem. Leaves are a major source of starches and along with the stems are ground up and used as food source in Ethiopia.

You can see the way the leaves tear along the perpendicular vein lines.

You can see the old leaf bases still attached, and showing the vascular traces in parallel groups rather than bunches like a dicot.

Misidentification:
Bananas likely but bananas have more oval stems.

Location:
Aptos
515 Humes Ave

Santa Cruz
203 Blackburn St.

Strelitzia nicolai - White Bird of Paradise

The White Bird of Paradise is usually planted to create a tropical feel in the garden with it's large banana like leaves. They are upright growing monocots on "woody" stems with the foliage clustered at the tips. Plants sucker at the base and can spread as wide as they grow tall.

Leaves are evergreen, banana-like, 5-8' long, about 12-16" wide, grayish green. Leaves get shredded along those veins running from the central to the margins. I like the edges of the petioles.

We often think of monocots having parallel venation, and they do, but they also have leaves like these where the veins seem to be in a pinnate venation pattern like a dicot. Well, they are. Kew Gardens says they are "pinnate with parallel-arching", while others call this penni-parallel venation.

Stems are eventually exposed when the older leaves fall off.

Flowers are strange indeed. They are cluster in a very complex inflorescence with a bluish boat shaped bract from which the individual flowers arise. Each flower has three free white steals and two fused petals and a purplish bit enclosing all the reproductive parts.

It took me years to "see" the bird in these flowers, not sure why but one day it just jumped out at me.

Misidentification:
I have read they are somewhat triangular resembling the Traveller's Tree, Ravenala, I wish, wow, what a plant that is.

Bananas?

Location:
Aptos
537 Humes Ave

Santa Cruz
302 Oceanview Ave
603 Washington St.

Magnolia grandiflora - Southern Magnolia

Southern Magnolia is a large evergreen flowering tree to about 50-60' tall and 30-40' wide forming a round topped canopy with massive branches and large leaves. Slow to medium grower. Native to southeastern US. These are my favorites, at the Aptos Hotel and in the parking lot on Church St in SC.

Leaves are evergreen, simple, elliptical shaped,  6-10" long, dark glossy green upper surface and usually some amount of copper colored hairs on the bottom surface, some more so than others, margins entire.

Stems stout, may be covered with the same copper hairs or smooth depending on the specimen. Distinct line around the stem at the nodes.

Flowers are pure white, large, 8-10" in diameter and often pretty high up in the tree. Flowers form a nice open bowl shape when opening in spring into summer. Fragrant as well but you better be tall. Lots of sex parts, males on bottom. 

Fruit looks like a cone of some sort but is really a woody aggregation of follicles that open up on one suture and release or showoff an orange seed. Below is a mature one and an immature one. The small dots below the fruit area is where the stamens were attached.

Bark is smooth and gray.

Many cultivars exist but the easiest one to identify is 'Little Gem'. Everything is smaller, size to 20' x 10' wide and leaves to about 6".

Misidentification: can't think of anything. Maybe a Ficus but not ones that grow here.

Location:
Aptos Hotel on Soqule Dr. parking lot on Church between Cedar and Center.

Santa Cruz: Downtown, Church St between Cedar and Center.

Watsonville: Holohan near East Lake.