Musa bukensis

Musa bukensis

Musa bukensis G. C. G. Argent, Notes from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 35 (1): 101 (1976).

Accepted name	Musa bukensis G. C. G. Argent, Notes from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 35 (1): 101 (1976).
Synonyms
Authorities	Argent 1976. The World Checklist of Monocotyledons lists Musa bukensis Argent, Notes Roy. Bot. Gard. Edinburgh 35: 101 (1976) as an accepted name.
Section	Australimusa
Distribution	Papua New Guinea (Bougainville district).
Description	"Pseudostem large, up to 12 m high and 150 cm girth at the base, of an intense glossy black colour throughout, or sometimes with a little green or brown in the upper part. Sap yellowish, white or pale to deep purple. Rhizomes long, the young suckers emerging up to 1 m from the parent stem. Shoulder dark brown or brownish green with a very broad (c. 2 cm wide) appressed but rugose, scarious margin. Petiole with irregular dark brown patches below and narrow horizontally reflexed wings which are scarious in the lower part but green above ; TS ratio 1.0. Leaf lamina green, without wax, strongly right-handed with auriculate basal lobes [item d in illustration] ; PB ratio 6 - 8. Peduncle stout, glabrous, green or brown. Bunch habit variable, horizontal or slightly ascending, often curved, moderately dense. Fruit apparently ageotropic standing out round the stem with little tendency to curve. Basal bracts long, purplish, quickly deciduous. Basal flowers functionally female. Pedicels long, up to 3 cms. Young fruit green, glabrous with the ovules in two rows per loculus. Mature fruits rich coppery orange in colour, cylindrical, between 2 - 3 times as long as broad and with a long slender beak at the apex. Seeds black, 4 - 6 mm in diameter, angular, vertically striolate, with a slightly depressed hilum and distinctly raised umbo. Male peduncle descending more or less vertically. Male bud large, almost conical, broadest about one quarter of the distance from the base, just over twice as long as broad, strongly imbricate for about one third of its length, dark purple with some cream at the base. Male bracts barely lifting away from the bud, not curling back, dark shining purplish red outside, cream inside except at the purplish tips. The male bracts are often removed by fruit bats but otherwise two or three bracts hang limply round the bud ; the bracts are eventually fully deciduous leaving the axis bare. Male flower with the compound tepal nearly three times as long as the free tepal. Compound tepal white with pale yellow tips to the lobes which are very deeply divided for sect. Australimusa. Free tepal more or less ovate in outline, but abruptly truncated distally or slightly emarginate, with a very short central apiculus". (from Argent 1976).
References	Argent 1976, 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.