| This is one of several Indonesian banana cultivars given a spurious species name
by Takenosin Nakai. Nakai says of it in his idiosyncratic English; "The stem of this greenish banana attains to 4
- 6 meters high, being very ordinary form of banana, but not pruinose at all. The
basal 2 - 7 bracts have female flowers and others hermaphrodite flowers. The flowers
are halfway persistent, so the small imperfct fruits from the hermaphrodite flowers make
long tail crowned by shrinked and dried perianth at the end of spike, which gives a
peculiar feature to this banana. The small imperfect fruits count more than 1000.
The real fruits from female flowers taste rather nice". This description of M. mirabilis seems very like Musa chiliocarpa C.
A. B. Backer more properly known as Musa
(AAB group) 'Pisang seribu' except that Nakai distinguishes them as follows:
Flores
afeminei steriles in nodis basalibus 4 - 5 biseriales in fructu virides angulati duri
inedules. Flores ceteri omnes hermaphroditi, fructus edules expermos 1000-3100 in
una spica densissime collocatos fromant. Folia subtus pruinosa. Spica
fructifera vulgo 2 - 3 metralis.
=
Musa chiliocarpa
Flores
basales faeminei fertiles fructus veros formantes
Axis inflorescentiae velutina
Folia subtus et petioli non pruinosa
Pseudocaulis [sera]mineus. Bractae basales 2-7 cum
floribus faemineis
qui demum fructus veros formantibus, ceterae cum floribus
hermaphroditis qui demum fructus parvos inedules
formantibus
=
Musa mirabilis
Hotta frequently
gives Musa acuminata as a synonym for cultivated, fruiting bananas. Even
where the cultivar is derived exclusively from Musa acuminata I think this is
unhelpful. Here it is more than likely plain wrong. |