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Cavendish banana (Musa acuminata)

Dlium Cavendish banana (Musa acuminata)
Cavendish banana (Musa acuminata) is a plant species in the Musaceae, a banana with small or seedless seeds, a evergreen perennial plant, the stems are composed of a layer of leaf sheaths that are tightly closed and emerge from completely buried tubers.

M. acuminata is formed as a pseudostem with a pile of leaf sheaths and is watery, soft, upright, up to 3 meters high, white or green to black in color and dries to brown, forming dense colonies by producing shoots around it.





The leaves are elongated, 120 cm long, 45 cm wide, watertight, a midrib in the middle and light green, the upper surface is dark green, the lower surface is whitish green with a flour coating.

Inflorescences grow horizontally or obliquely from the ends of the stems. Individual flowers are white to yellowish in color and are negative geotropic. The female flowers are located near the base and develop into fruit, the male flowers are located at the very top and are bud-shaped between the coarse bracts.

The fruits grow in bunches of up to 20 groups and each group has up to 20 fruits. Each fruit is up to 23 cm long, up to 4 cm in diameter and weighs up to 200 grams. Each fruit contains up to 62 small seeds or no seeds at all depending on the cultivar via natural mutations resulting from vegetative propagation.

TAXON

Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Tracheophyta
Subphylum: Angiospermae
Class: Liliopsida
Order: Zingiberales
Family: Musaceae
Genus: Musa
Section: Musa L. in Sp. Pl.: 1043 (1753)
Species: Musa acuminata Colla in Mem. Reale Accad. Sci. Torino 25: 394 (1820)
Subspecies: Musa acuminata subsp. acuminata, Musa acuminata subsp. truncata (Ridl.) Kiew
Variety: Musa acuminata subsp. errans (Blanco) R.V.Valmayor, Musa acuminata subsp. halabanensis (Meijer) M.Hotta, Musa acuminata subsp. malaccensis (Ridl.) N.W.Simmonds, Musa acuminata subsp. microcarpa (Becc.) N.W.Simmonds, Musa acuminata subsp. siamea N.W.Simmonds, Musa acuminata var. sumatrana (Becc.) Nasution, Musa acuminata var. tomentosa (Warb. ex K.Schum.) Nasution, Musa acuminata var. chinensis Häkkinen & H.Wang

PUBLICATIONS

Albano, P.-O. (2003). La Conaissance des Plantes Exotiques: 1-324. Édisud, Aix-en-Provence.

Baksh-Comeau, Y., Maharaj, S.S., Adams, C.D., Harris, S.A., Filer, D.L. & Hawthorne, W.D. (2016). An annotated checklist of the vascular plants of Trinidad and Tobago with analysis of vegetation types and botanical 'hotspots'. Phytotaxa 250: 1-431.

Girmansyah, D. & al. (eds.) (2013). Flora of Bali an annotated checklist: 1-158. Herbarium Bogorensis, Indonesia.

Gosline, G., Bidault, E., van der Burgt, X., Cahen, D., Challen, G., Condé, N., Couch, C., Couvreur, T.L.P., Dagallier, L.M.J., Darbyshire, I., Dawson, S., Doré, T.S., Goyder, D., Grall, A., Haba, P., Haba, P., Harris, D., Hind, D.J.N., Jongkind, & al. (2023). A Taxonomically-verified and Vouchered Checklist of the Vascular Plants of the Republic of Guinea. Nature, scientific data 10, Article number: 327: [1]-[12].

Govaerts, R. (2004). World Checklist of Monocotyledons Database in ACCESS: 1-54382. The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Häkkinen, M. & Väre, H. (2008). Typification and check-list of Musa L. names (Musaceae) with nomenclatural notes. Adansonia, III, 30: 63-112.

Nelson Sutherland, C.H. (2008). Catálogo de las plantes vasculares de Honduras. Espermatofitas: 1-1576. SERNA/Guaymuras, Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Nurtjahya, E. & al. (2026). Flowering Plants of Bangka Island: Native and Introduced. Acta Botanica Hungarica 68: 127-156.

Pandey, R.P. & Dilwakar, P.G. (2008). An integrated check-list flora of Andaman and Nicobar islands, India. Journal of Economic and Taxonomic Botany 32: 403-500.

Pasha, M.K. & Uddin, S.B. (2013). Dictionary of plant names of Bangladesh, Vasc. Pl.: 1-434. Janokalyan Prokashani, Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Perrier, X. & al. (2019). East African diploid and triploid bananas: a genetic complex transported from South-East Asia. Annals of Botany 123: 19-36.

Sauerbier, H., Cabrera Calixto, F. & Muer, T. (2023). Flora Vascular de Canarias: 1-1514. Turquesa.

VERNACULAR NAME

Arabic: موز كافنديش
Bunun: Bunbun
Chamorro: Aga'
Chinese (simplified): 小果野芭蕉 - 小果野蕉 - 香蕉 - 尖蕉
Chinese (traditional): 香蕉 - 小果野蕉
Danish: Dværgbanan
Dutch: Blauwe Banaan
English: Cavendish banana
Finnish: Kääpiöbanaani
French: Banane
Hong Kong: 香蕉
Hungarian: Törpe banán
Indonesia: Pisang
Italian: Platano
Japanese: マレーヤマバショウ
Java: Gedang
Korean: 바나나
Lithuanian: Mažasis bananas
Polish: Banan spiczasty
Portuguese: Bananeira
Russian: Банан заострённый
Slovak: Banánovník končistolistý
Spanish: Plátano malayo
Sunda: Cau
Swedish: ädelbanan
Tagalog: Saging
Taiwan: 香蕉
Thai: กล้วยป่า
Ukrainian: Банан загостренний

Aryo Bandoro
Dlium TheDlium
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Dlium

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