Musa boman

Musa boman

Musa boman G. C. G. Argent, Notes from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 35 (1): 108 (1976).

Accepted name	Musa boman G. C. G. Argent, Notes from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 35 (1): 108 (1976).
Synonyms
Authorities	The accepted name is from Argent 1976. The World Checklist of Monocotyledons lists Musa boman Argent, Notes Roy. Bot. Gard. Edinburgh 35: 108 (1976) as the accepted name.
Section	Australimusa
Distribution	Papua New Guinea (Bewani-Torricelli chain of mountains).
Description	"Pseudostem large up to c. 10 m tall and 150 cm in girth at the base, glaucous green above becoming glaucous blackish-brown with clinging sheath below ; the sap watery turning brown on exposure to air. Rhizome short, suckering rather sparse, the suckers growing up close to the parent stem. Shoulder greyish-green glaucous with appressed hardly scarious margin but occasionally slightly rugose. Petiole glaucous waxy grey-green, with slightly inturned green edges ; TS ratio 1.1 Leaf lamina greyish-green on upperside, extremely waxy, pale creamy-green below, right-handed with rounded basal lobes; PB ratio 8-10. Peduncle whitish, waxy and glabrous. Bunch emerging almost horizon- tally but becoming vertically pendent by maturity, fruits apparently without tropic response, spreading irregularly or semi-pendent. Basal bracts pale cream, lingulate, reflexing and curling, quickly deciduous. Basal flowers fully hermaphrodite with well developed stamens. Pedicels 1.5 - 2.5 cm long. Young fruit pale cream, glabrous, ovules in four rows per loculus. Mature fruit bright reddish-orange in colour, with dull pinkish flesh ; indehiscent, not highly aromatic, elongate and strongly angled, contracted suddenly at both base and apex. Seeds 6 - 7 mm diameter, plump, irregularly papillose with a slightly concave hilum and slightly raised dimpled umbo. Male peduncle vertically pendent. Male bud hardly longer than broad, always imbricate at least at the tip, cream. Male bracts lifting to well above the horizontal, the outerside becoming grey on lifting the inner side remaining cream, not becoming revolute, quickly and completely deciduous. Male flower with the compound tepal about twice as long as the free tepal; compound tepal yellowish cream in colour with dull yellow tips; free tepal translucent white, without a subapical wrinkle, transversely truncated distally but with a small apiculus". (Argent 1976).
References	Argent 1976 : 108, IPGRI, Jong & Argent 2001, Simmonds & Weatherup 1990 : 570, WCM.
Comments	TS ratio is the vertical depth of the petiole canal divided by the vertical depth of the petiole tissue beneath. PB ratio is the ratio of petiole length to leaf blade length. As applied by Argent these ratios should strictly be calculated for the fourth-last, fully expanded vegetative leaf below the inflorescence. When first described by Argent in 1976 he placed this species in section Australimusa although according to Simmonds & Weatherup "less out of taxonomic conviction than out of the observation of putative hybrids with M. lolodensis". Simmonds & Weatherup's numercial taxonomic analysis of wild Musa species placed M. boman in section Eumusa (Musa) 2 despite the fact that it had there an "anomalous" chromosome number of x (= 1n) = 10. Following Jong & Argent it is kept here in section Australimusa.