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Most banana cultivars which exhibit purely or mostly Musa acuminata genomes are dessert bananas, while hybrids of M. acuminata and M. balbisiana are mostly cooking bananas or plantains. [23] Musa acuminata is one of the earliest plants to be domesticated by humans for agriculture, 7,000 years ago in New Guinea and Wallacea. [24]
The banana plant is the largest herbaceous flowering plant. [2] All the above-ground parts of a banana plant grow from a structure called a corm. [3] Plants are normally tall and fairly sturdy with a treelike appearance, but what appears to be a trunk is actually a pseudostem composed of multiple leaf-stalks .
Banana plants are among the largest extant herbaceous plants, some reaching up to 9 m (30 ft) in height or 18 m (59 ft) in the case of Musa ingens.The large herb is composed of a modified underground stem (), a false trunk or pseudostem formed by the basal parts of tightly rolled leaves, a network of roots, and a large flower spike.
Musa sikkimensis (also called the Darjeeling banana) is a species of flowering plant in the Musaceae (or banana) plant family. In a west-to-east direction, its native range extends from the state of Sikkim in India , through the east Himalayan region, into northern Myanmar .
Fe'i bananas are an important component of ceremonial feasts in the Marquesas and the Society Islands. [3] Karat bananas are reported to be one of the few kinds of banana that can be used in ceremonial presentations in Pohnpei, Micronesia. [12] A Samoan legend is that the mountain banana and the lowland banana fought.
The above-ground part of the plant is a "false stem" or pseudostem, consisting of leaves and their fused bases. Each pseudostem can produce a single flowering stem. After fruiting, the pseudostem dies, but offshoots may develop from the base of the plant. Cultivars of banana are usually sterile, without seeds or viable pollen. [4]
Musa basjoo has been cultivated both for its fibre and as an ornamental plant in gardens outside its natural range, first in Japan, and from the late 19th century, then in the warmer parts of western and central Europe (north of the United Kingdom), the United States, and southern Canada. In gardens, it is used as a hardy 'tropical foliage' plant.
It is assumed that wild bananas were cooked and eaten, as farmers would not have developed the cultivated banana otherwise. Seeded Musa balbisiana fruit are called butuhan ('with seeds') in the Philippines, [7] and kluai tani (กล้วยตานี) in Thailand, [8] where its leaves are used for packaging and crafts. [9]