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Musa cavendishii
The name appears in three forms in the literature all referring to the same plant
Musa cavendishii A. B. Lambert
Musa cavendishii J. Paxton
Musa cavendishii A. B. Lambert ex J. Paxton, Mag. Bot. 3: 51,52 (1837)
Accepted name |
Musa (AAA group) 'Dwarf Cavendish' |
Synonyms |
1.
Musa acuminata L. A. Colla
2. Musa nana J. de Loureiro (name accepted at Mobot)
3. Musa nana auct. non J. de Loureiro
4. Musa chinensis R. Sweet
5. Musa sinensis P. A. Sagot ex J. G. Baker
6. Musa sinensis P. A. Sagot
7. Musa sinensis R. Sweet ex P. A. Sagot |
Authorities |
The
accepted name is from Stover & Simmonds. Synonym
references are as follows: 1 is from Argent, Griffiths, GRIN, Hotta 1989; 2 is from Stover
& Simmonds (although Burkill treats this as the accepted name and so do Mobot), 3 and
4 are inferred via Griffiths, Huxley; 4 also from Index Kewensis, 5 is from ?, 6 is from
Mobot; 7 is from Stover & Simmonds. |
Section |
Eumusa |
Distribution |
Originally from China now pantropical. |
Description |
Whole
plant 4 - 6 ft. high. Trunk 2 - 3 ft. long, suckering. Leaves 6 - 8 very close
together, spreading, 2 - 3 ft. long, much rounded at the base, rather glaucous; stalk
short, deeply channelled. Inflorescence dense, short, drooping. Bracts
red-brown or dark; male flowers and their bracts persistent. Perianth yellowish
white, an inch long, with five obtuse lobes; free petal about half as long. Fruits
as many as 200 to 250 in the bunch, oblong, six-angled, slightly curved, 4 - 5 in. long,
above 1½ in. in diameter; seedless, edible, with a rather thick skin and delicate
fragrant flesh. (Fawcett,
1913). |
References |
Argent 1984, Bloemenbureau Holland, Burkill 1935, Champion 1967
: 39, Fawcett 1913 : 265, Flora Guandong : 394, Griffiths
1994, GRIN, Hotta 1989, Huxley 1992, Index Kewensis, Mobot Tropicos, Reynolds 1927, Stover & Simmonds 1987. |
Comments |
The complexity of the nomenclature (not fully resolved here)
of this familiar plant is due mainly to the fact that 'Dwarf Cavendish' never was a single
clone but is a group of clones. Dwarfism is the commonest somatic mutation and as
pointed out by Stover & Simmonds "the 'Dwarf Cavendish' must have had numerous
origins by mutation from taller members of the Cavendish group..". In the literature the name Musa cavendishii appears in
a number of variations:
1. Musa cavendishii A. B. Lambert quoted for example
in Stover & Simmonds 1987 and the Flora of Guandong.
2. Musa cavendishii J. Paxton quoted for example in Argent 1984
3. Musa cavendishii A. B. Lambert ex J. Paxton quoted for example in Huxley 1992
or at Mobot Tropicos.
A further variation seen in the literature is that the specific epithet cavendishii
may or may not be capitalised. It should not be. These are all the same plant
and the reason for the alternative forms of the name lies somewhere in the story of the
European 'discovery' of the plant. The following is based on the account of the
Cavendish banana published by William Fawcett in 1921 (not seen) and re-told by Reynolds.
In 1826 a gentleman named Charles
Telfair, resident in Mauritius, was the first to obtain plants of this 'species' from its
native country, Southern China; he considered it the most valuable specimen in his
extensive collection. In 1829 Telfair sent to England two plants to a friend of his, a Mr
Barclay of Burryhill. [I'm not sure where this is,
Burryhill is not in a modern gazetteer. Possibly the name has changed to
Burrowhill, a town in Surrey.] On the death of Mr
Barclay, one of these two plants was purchased by the Duke of Devonshire and fruited in
his private gardens at Chatsworth near Bakewell in Derbyshire. At this time, in 1836,
Aylmer Bourke Lambert exhibited at a meeting of the Linnean Society a copy of an old
Chinese drawing which he believed referred to the same 'species' and named it Musa
Cavendishii in honour of the Duke of Devonshire whose family name was Cavendish. In
the Magazine of Botany for 1837, Joseph Paxton, a gentleman associated with the private
gardens of the Duke of Devonshire gives a coloured plate and a description of this plant
and adopts the name given it by A. B. Lambert.
If you believe Lambert to have
published the name validly the correct construction is Musa cavendishii A.
B. Lambert.
If you believe Lambert did not publish the name validly, and
should therefore be ignored, but that Paxton did publish validly the correct construction
is Musa cavendishii J. Paxton
If you believe that Lambert did not publish the name validly
but that Paxton's publication validates the name given by Lambert the correct construction
is Musa cavendishii A. B. Lambert ex J. Paxton.
The difficulty of deciding on the correct construction of the
Linnean name is avoided by adopting as the accepted name Musa (AAA group) 'Dwarf
Cavendish' as I have done above. Why?
In the 1950's Simmonds and Shepherd recognised that cultivated bananas like 'Dwarf
Cavendish' were so far removed from their original species that they could not usefully be
assigned Linnean binomials. Simmonds & Shepherd proposed an alternate system for
nomenclature of cultivated bananas and plantains based on the genomic constitution of the
plants.
For a description of Simmonds and Shepherd's system click
here.
Despite Simmonds and Shepherd's valid, elegant, simple and
above all informative nomenclature system, the application of what are effectively
spurious or, at least, mis-applied latinised names is still widespread even in recent and,
supposedly, authoritative publications. Where their use has been devalued if not
actually discredited, the tendency to cling to Linnean binomials as the only mechanism
with which to fix a plant in the botanical or horticultural firmament seems to me to be
plain unhelpful. And attempts to crowbar plants artificially into species categories
either misleads us or leaves us (and sometimes apparently the author) thoroughly
confused. A couple of examples:
- Argent,
Griffiths, GRIN and Hotta all offer us Musa acuminata as a synonym of Musa
cavendishii (or vice versa). In the light of Simmonds & Shepherd this
surely cannot be justified. Musa cavendishii is a seedless triploid
derived from diploid, seeded Musa acuminata but it is not that plant.
- In a woeful example of plain error and
confabulation Huxley 1992 informs us that 'Dwarf Cavendish', among other desert bananas,
is a form either of "...Musa x paradisiacum (sic)
or Musa troglodytarum ...". This mistake is thankfully not
repeated in Griffiths 1994, derived from Huxley, but, as mentioned above, neither is it
properly corrected.
There are many cultivated forms, clones, of Musa (AAA
group) 'Dwarf Cavendish' grown for ornament in Europe. Their number has proliferated
in recent years as a result of imports from commercial micropropagation laboratories in
India. Each laboratory has made their own selections of the 'Dwarf Cavendish'
cultivars 'Basrai' and 'Srimanti' to differentiate their products from competitors in the
domestic market. Although these selections were all made for fruit quality and
yield, some of these plants find their way into European horticulture, mainly via Holland,
as ornamental pot plants. Other clones of 'Dwarf Cavendish' also arrive in Europe
from America.
Some of these ornamental clones have brand names such as
'Bananarama', 'Tropicana', 'Chyla Dwarf' and at least one, 'Purple Rain' with very dark
leaves, is (or rather was, the protection seems to have lapsed) protected under European
Plant Breeders' Rights. 'Bananarama' and 'Chyla Dwarf' are very dwarf. The
most dwarf of all is probably 'Novak' a plant with an interesting and rather sad history.
'Novak' was developed as a radiation-induced mutant at the
IAEA/FAO Joint Laboratories in Siebersdorf, near Vienna in Austria. The scientist in
charge of the programme at the time, and a great Musa expert, was a Czech
scientist, Dr Frantisek (Frank) Novak. Frank was tragically killed in a car crash
while travelling in Czechoslovakia shortly after the collapse of the Iron Curtain.
The plant is named for him.
There
is a variant of 'Novak' derived from tissue culture and known as 'Little Prince'.
This plant was erroneously marketed as a form of Musa basjoo in the UK in
2003.
Musa (AAA group) 'Dwarf Cavendish' has an AGM from the Royal Horticultural Society.
The plant was introduced to UK horticulture in 1829.
(P. M. B. 3, 51) |
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