| Comments |
This seems to be a form of Musa acuminata, "afford[ing] good
white wax melting at 84ºC" (Nakai citing Gorter) and used in Indonesia for
making batik cloth. Nakai goes on to say that "this
banana is native of Mid-Java, and formerly was cultivated much in the villages south of
Bandoeng to get commercial wax. The leaves are so rich of white wax, as by touch
one's hand and cloth become as white as he touched white chalk wall."
Although
this taxon is not mentioned by Simmonds 1956 it would seem straightforward that this
Javanese plant should be treated as a synonym of his "usually
strongly waxy" Musa acuminata subsp. malaccensis.
However, admitting a Javanese plant under synonymy is not quite as simple as that because,
as Simmonds himself points out, "if [ ] the same subspecies is
characteristic of the lowlands of Java then the name zebrina van Houtte would
have to be used as having priority over malaccensis".
The combination Musa acuminata subsp. zebrina is in the literature, see
for example Jarret 1987 where confusingly it seems to be an entity distinct from subsp. malaccensis,
but I do not know the authority for it. |