SJN-Water suckers have large fully developed leaves even on the locations closest to the ground. (They look like leaves on a mature plant.)

Sword suckers have very narrow leaves. At first glance they look almost like something is wrong with them in comparison to the water suckers but sword suckers will usually perform better than water suckers.

Hope this helps I can't find any good photos right now. I'll try to take a few in the greenhouse tomorrow.

If it is two or three feet tall, and still doesn't have real leaves it is a sword (basically a long, pointy, leafless spike). If it is 12" tall and already has real leaves, then it is a water sucker. Some water suckers go on to be fine plants, but most languish and lack vigor.

Thanks for the explanations, that clears it up the identity part a little better for me. A few more questions:
So, should all water suckers be removed in order to get a faster fruiting mother plant or does it matter?
Also, when you buy bananas at nurseries and such, do they only sell you sword suckers or do we (general public) sometimes unknowingly buy water suckers that have been removed from the original mother plant and will probably never bloom?
Wanna run,
that is a good question, I was wondering that myself too.
~SJN

Here's some information from Joe Real, this was taken from a thread that I started a year and a half ago on Bananas.org

Most plants that produce suckers will tend to have these two kinds and some are in-between kinds though. Even asparagus, bamboos, and other rhizome producing monocots have this tendency.

Adaptation-wise, this is advantageous to the plant. The sword sucker type are best suited when there is competition around. The plant need not spend its resources on the leaves when its priority is to get as fast as possible to the sunlight, ensuring competitive edge in a denser environment. That is why this naturally happens when your banana mat is wider or the clump is denser, and that is why the sword type pups are designed to grow really fast with bigger sturdier trunks. The leaves will be formed when it gets a big headstart. Some varieties will have mostly sword sucker types though, even if the mat is not dense, perhaps these cultivars have adapted to the usually dense settings. Of course there are some advantages to the umbrella type pups in a very sparse setting. These pups are well ahead photosynthesizing very early on to help the plants gather more carbohydrates needed to form sword sucker type pups when it gets too crowded. I speculate that most dwarf types originated from umbrella type suckers when these sport mutations become etched into the plant's genes, but that is just my speculation.

I have removed sword sucker types of pups when they are just 1" tall, but that is almost a near laboratory condition. The best in my experience is to separate them when they are at least 1 to 3 ft tall at the trunk, depending on the variety, just before the leaves start to become bigger than 4" wide. This way, you don't need to trim off the leaves when transplanting them, They are the fastest growers among other types of pups as they were designed to be, from my explanation above.

Also,
They are more than OK to use. Not only speaking from my actual tested experience in the tropics and here, I also came across several scientific articles in very credible scientific journals discussing the merits and advantages of using the sword-sucker types of pups over the umbrella types. This is the practice done by most banana growers when replacing plants damaged in-situ as they grow very quickly. They grow several times faster than a the same height tissue-cultured plant, and also bloom much earlier, and with tremendously bigger bunches of fruit than either the tissue cultured plantlets or umbrella types of pups. Of course in time, the tissue cultured plants or umbrella types of pups will produce sword sucker pups of their own and after the clump has matured or mat has grown wider, the differences between the two types should no longer be noticeable except that the other one gets established much faster, perhaps 6 months to 2 years ahead.

When you take out sword sucker type of pup, make sure to chunk out with it, the biggest portion of mother corm that you can get away with, without dramatically damaging the mother plant (if it is still there in the clump).

Other people also confused the definition between sword-sucker, umbrella, and water types of pups and wouldn't know what they are throwing away.

Joe

Hi troicalintoronto,
Thanks a million for that very thorough explaination. I am going to save it for future reference. I bet this clears it up for lots of folks. Thanks so much.
~SJN

Yup, thats great! Thanks!

What about damage to the mother plant when removing these pups?

So ive never asked a quesfion here so here it goes. I had 2 dwarf cavendish bananas. They died because they were in to much wind and rain. But as they lookex really bad they produced 11 pups. All doing fabulous. I have noticed one of them has another shoot growing about 2 inches away from the base of the pup. This pup its coming from is a little over a foot tall. This little shoot coming off looks a little different. Ive seen something called sword shoots. Is that different from just pups? All of mine r growing in pots. We live in missouri. These pups r only about 9 to 10 months old. Can they actually produce more pups at this early stage? Do sword pups bloom like regular pups? Also do i actually have a chance at getting bananas from these. Thanks for all the help in advance.