Banana

[Itort]

Has anyone ever fed banana leaves to their tort? Why I ask is a local nursery has ornamental bananas (blanda I believe) on clearance and I thought of getting some for shelter/munchies for my RFs and MEPs. Still waiting for them to put elephant ears (alocasia) on sale.

 

[K9KidsLove]

Did you check Beautifuldragons.com to see if banana leaves are on their list? I can't remember & I don't have them on either of my lists.
I have elephant ears on my list of poisonous plants.
Good luck
Patsy

 

[Itort]

Did you check Beautifuldragons.com to see if banana leaves are on their list? I can't remember & I don't have them on either of my lists.
I have elephant ears on my list of poisonous plants.
Good luck
Patsy

Alocasia and Colacasia are an important part of the diet for Manouri emys torts and the plants are for them. I must emphasis these are for MEPs and MEEs only, not any other tort specie I'm aware of. Bye the way the beardie site will be useful, thanks for directing me there.

 

[Yvonne G]

Here in the Central Valley of California, where winter temps. get down to 32 and sometimes colder at night, banana trees freeze. But they grow back from the roots in the spring. So I planted a really nice variegated banana tree from a 5 gallon pot in the ground in my yellowfoot tortoise pen. Naturally, last winter it froze, but this spring, it is growing back and there are about 3 new little banana trees besides the larger middle one growing from the roots. You can see where the yellowfoot tortoises have been eating the leaves of the smaller plantlets. I also have elephant ear (collocasia) planted in there, and when it was just starting to emerge from the bulb they would eat the new growth, but now that they are full grown plants, they don't eat it anymore. I planted it in the yellowfoot pen so that I can harvest it to feed the manouria. You can't plant ANYTHING in the Manouria pen, because they eat EVERYTHING!!!

So, to answer your question, yes, banana tree leaves are ok to feed your tortoises. I cut fronds off of the main tree and feed them to my Manouria, Aldabran and to my yellowfoot tortoises. I haven't tried giving any to the sulcata, leopards or desert tortoises because they have plenty of graze without supplementing.

Yvonne

 

[Itort]

Thank you Yvonne. You answered a couple questions. I thought redfoots like yellowfoots could eat colocasia and alocasia because the do eat closely related philodendrum. I will pick the banana plants up.

 

[Redfootedboxturtles]

All of my tortoises ignore it.