Description |
The full description from Simmonds 1960 is as follows: Plants
huge, the pseudostems 10-15 m. tall and 2 m. in girth at the base, sparsely suckering; juice
watery; sheaths waxy below, tinged reddish brown above; petioles up to 60
cm. long, deeply channeled above with erect and slightly scarious margins; leaves
up to 5 x 1 m.; inflorescence huge, pendulous borne on a massive glabrous peduncle
10 cm. in diameter; basal hands very numerous (ca. 20), each bearing 16-25 hermaphrodite
flowers; hermaphrodite flowers, the ovary 5-6 x 1-2-1.4 cm., angular, slightly
tapered above and below, trilocular with biseriate ovules, the compound tepal 4.5
cm. long, thickened at the back angles, and surmounted by 5 deep (2 cm.) lobes, the
outermost pair of major lobes bearing awn-like processes 7 mm. long, the inner lobes
shortly (2 mm.) apiculate, the free tepal about 3 cm. long, oblong, raggedly
obtuse-mucronate at the apex, hardly tapered towards the base, somewhat thickened at the
back and transversely wrinkled-corrugated in the upper two thirds of its length, the style
massive, about 4 mm. thick surmounted by an irregularly shaped but not greatly swollen
stigma, the stamens 5, somewhat shorter than the stigma; bracts of the basal hands
deciduous, oblong, subobtuse, ca. 34 x 18 cm., somewhat fleshy-leathery, and apparently
not so brittle as the male bracts; male axis massive, ca. 1 m. long at time of
bunch maturity, with very prominent bract insertion scars; male bud massive, oblong
to subglobose, the component bracts loosely packed and not imbricate at the tip; male
bracts deciduous, very broadly ovate 21 x 17 cm., rounded at the apex, shallowly
dish-shaped and slightly hooded at the tip, thin, leathery-brittle (not toughly fibrous)
in texture, dull greyish-purple and shiny without, pale in colour within; male flowers
20-25 per bract, biseriate, each 7 cm. x 5-6 mm. overall, the abortive ovary 8 mm.
long, the compound tepal 6 cm. long, strongly thickened along the two angles, deeply (4
mm.) 5 (i.e. 3 + 2)-toothed and tinged with orange-yellow at the apex, the free tepal
3 cm. long, oblanceolate, rounded and ragged-mucronate at the apex, tapered and slightly
thickened at the back towards the base, the stamens 5, with anther 2.5 cm. long and
filament 2 cm. long, elongating at anthesis; fruit-bunch massive, about 20 hands of
16-25 fruits each, very compact, estimated to weigh about 60 kg.; mature fruits
massive, ca. 18 x 3-4 cm., largest towards the base of the bunch, tapering below into the
short (2 cm.) pedicel, rounded or shortly and bluntly acuminate at the apex, devoid of
floral remnants, lightly angled and somewhat flattened on the faces opposed to neighbours
in development, pale in colour; seeds smoothly angular in outline, very variable in
shape as a result of compression between neighbours, dark brown to black, ca. 7 mm. in
mean diameter (4-10 mm.) with a deep (2 mm.) hilar cavity but lacking an umbo opposite the
hilum; somatic chromosome number 2n = 14. |