Musa acuminata is a species of banana native to Southern Asia, its range comprising the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. Many of the modern edible dessert bananas are derived from this species, although some are hybrids with Musa balbisiana. First cultivated by humans around 8000 BCE, it is one of the early examples of domesticated plants.
Description Musa acuminata is classified by botanists as an herbaceous plant and an evergreen and a perennial, but not as a tree. The trunk (known as the pseudostem) is made of tightly packed layers of leaf sheaths emerging from completely or partially buried corms. The leaves are at the top of the leaf sheaths, or petioles and in the subspecies M. a. truncata the blade or lamina is up to 22 feet (6.7 m) in length and 39 inches (0.99 m) wide. The inflorescence grows horizontally or obliquely from the trunk. The individual flowers are white to yellowish-white in color and are negatively geotropic (that is, growing upwards and away from the ground). Both male and female flowers are present in a single inflorescence. Female flowers are located near the base (and develop into fruit), and the male flowers located at the tipmost top-shaped bud in between leathery bracts. The rather slender fruits are berries, the size of each depends on the number of seeds they contain. Each fruit can have 15 to 62 seeds. Each fruit bunch can have an average of 161.76 ± 60.62 fingers with each finger around 2.4 by 9 cm (1 by 3+1⁄2 in) in size. The seeds of wild M. acuminata are around 5 to 6 mm (3⁄16 to 1⁄4 in) in diameter. They are subglobose or angular in shape and very hard. The tiny embryo is located at the end of the micropyle. Each seed of M. acuminata typically produces around four times its size in edible starchy pulp (the parenchyma, the portion of the bananas eaten), around 0.23 cm3 (230 mm3; 0.014 cu in). Wild M. acuminata is diploid with 2n=2x=22 chromosomes, while cultivated varieties (cultivars) are mostly triploid (2n=3x=33) and parthenocarpic, meaning producing fruit without seeds. The most familiar dessert banana cultivars belong to the Cavendish subgroup. These high yielding cultivars were produced through selection of the natural mutations resulting from the normal vegetative propagation of banana farming. The ratio of pulp to seeds increases dramatically in "seedless" edible cultivars: the small and largely sterile seeds are now surrounded by 23 times their size in edible pulp. The seeds themselves are reduced to tiny black specks along the central axis of the fruit.
Taxonomy Musa acuminata belongs to section Musa (formerly Eumusa) of the genus Musa. It belongs to the Family Musaceae of the Order Zingiberales. It is divided into several subspecies (see § Subspecies section below). M. acuminata was first described by the Italian botanist Luigi Aloysius Colla in the book Memorie della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino (1820). Although other authorities have published various names for this species and its hybrids mistaken for different species (notably Musa sapientum by Linnaeus which is now known to be a hybrid of M. acuminata and Musa balbisiana), Colla's publication is the oldest name for the species and thus has precedence over the others from the rules of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature. Colla also was the first authority to recognize that both Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana were wild ancestral species, even though the specimen he described was a naturally occurring seedless polyploid like cultivated bananas.
Subspecies Musa acuminata is highly variable and the number of subspecies accepted can vary from six to nine between different authorities. The following are the most commonly accepted subspecies:
Musa acuminata subsp. errans Argent = Musa errans Teodoro, Musa troglodyatarum L. var. errans, Musa errans Teodoro var. botoan Known as saging matsing and saging chonggo (both meaning 'monkey banana'), saging na ligao ('wild banana'), and agutay in Filipino. Found in the Philippines. It is a significant maternal ancestor of many modern dessert bananas (AA and AAA groups). It is an attractive subspecies with blue-violet inflorescence and very pale green unripe fruits. Musa acuminata subsp. malaccensis (Ridley) Simmonds = Musa malaccensis Ridley Found in peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra. It is the paternal parent of the Latundan banana. Musa acuminata subsp. microcarpa (Beccari) Simmonds = Musa microcarpa Beccari Found in Borneo. It is the ancestor of the cultivar 'Viente Cohol'. Musa acuminata subsp. siamea Simmonds Found in Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. Musa acuminata subsp. truncata (Ridley) Kiew Musa acuminata subsp. zebrina (Van Houtte) R. E. Nasution Commonly known as blood bananas. Native to Java. It is cultivated as an ornamental plant for the dark red patches of color on their predominantly dark green leaves. It has very slender pseudostems with fruits containing seeds like those of grapes. It is one of the earliest bananas spread eastwards to the Pacific and westward towards Africa, where it became the paternal parent of the East African Highland bananas (the Mutika/Lujugira subgroup of the AAA group). In Hawaii it is known as the mai'a 'oa', and is of cultural and folk medicinal significance as the only seeded banana to be introduced to the islands before European contact.
Distribution
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