It
would be very interesting if there was an extant Mexican Musa but there isn't.
The paper gives a full Latin diagnosis of the taxon and acknowledgements are made to staff
at NYBG and UC (Chairman of the Board of editors of Madroño) who reviewed the paper.The
following are extracts from the paper.
Type.
Brookside at about 100m. altitude, in a wet sunny field near Colonia Hidalgo, Acacoyagua,
Chiapas, June 5, 1948, Matuda 18320 (Matuda Herbarium; isotypes at the Instituto de
Biología de la Universidad Nacional de México and at the Chicago Natural History Museum.
Local
name; Platano silvestre. Occasional, being nether common nor yet rare, and mostly in the
wild state. It is never found at elevations below 100 meters, being evidently restricted
to a belt between 100 and 300 metres above sea level, and always close to the banks of
brooks. It is quite generally distributed between these elevations in the District of
Soconusco, and it is sometimes cultivated by the natives along plantation-borders for its
attractive rosy bracts.
This
new species seems very close to Musa rosacea Jacq., but it differs from this in
its longer perigonia, and in having six flowers uniseriate in the axils of single bracts,
very wide acuminate petals and long stout petioles.
Musa
mexicana is not only noteworthy as a novelty but is, in addition, the first record of
the occurrence of the genus Musa in the native wild flora of the American continent. All
the other species so far known have originated in southeastern Asia.
This appears to be a carefully written paper but the
reference to Musa rosacea
Jacq. immediately raises doubts. Musa rosacea N. J.
von Jacquin is a member of Musa (AAB
group) - see link - so Matuda cannot mean that plant. What Matuda would seem to mean
is Musa rosacea Hort. non Jacq. which is an invalid name commonly applied to Musa
ornata Roxb.
Cheesman 1949b comments that M.
ornata is a tolerant plant, of moderate size, and fairly ornamental, and by
virtue of those characters has been grown in gardens in many parts of the tropics.
The plant was in Mauritius before 1805 and so must have begun to travel several years
before it was botanically described in 1824. As evidence of its travels Cheesman
quotes Bassler 1926 who found Musa ornata "growing on
the edge of an Indian banana plantation on "the far upper edge of the Amazonian plain
of eastern Peru", in so remote a locality that he at first wondered whether he had
come upon an indigenous American Musa". This instance is also
quoted by Moore 1957 querying the status of M. mexicana.
Musa ornata is also a
rather variable plant and Cheesman acknowledged that his description "may not in all details cover the whole species".
In the light of the above it would
seem quite probable that Matuda's plant is an escape from cultivation rather than the
other way around. The differences cited by Matuda to distinguish M. mexicana
would seem to be within the natural range of variability of M. ornata or
may represent introgression from another species. Matuda's careful
documentation of localities where he saw the plant and herbarium specimens should
facilitate follow-up. |