Musa peekelii

Musa peekelii

Musa peekelii C. (K.) A. G. Lauterbach, Bot. Jahrb. 50: 306, fig. 1 (1913).

Accepted name	Musa peekelii C. (K.) A. G. Lauterbach, Bot. Jahrb. 50: 306, fig. 1 (1913).
Synonyms
Authorities	Argent 1976. The World Checklist of Monocotyledons lists Musa peekelii Lauterb., Bot. Jahrb. Syst. 50: 306 (1913) as an accepted name.
Section	Australimusa
Distribution	Papua New Guinea.
Description	Pseudostems up to 10 m tall and 80 cm in girth, predominantly of a rich brown colour in the lower part, brown or non-waxy green above. Sap variable, usually bright violet or purple but occasionally pale pink or cream. Rhizomes short ; suckers arising more or less vertically from the ground and plants often forming dense clumps with many pseudostems. Shoulder non-waxy, green, commonly with a narrow appressed non-scarious black margin. Petiole pale yellowish-green, not or slightly waxy in the upper part, margins usually turned inwards over the canal ; TS ratio 0.6. Leaf lamina bright green non-waxy above paler and very waxy below. Leaf base right-handed and rounded [ ] ; PB ratio 3 - 4.5. Peduncle glabrous green, the bunch hanging vertically downwards moderately to extremely lax. Hands of fruit more or less ageotropic standing out or hanging at an angle. Basal bracts long, lingulate, brown or green, shiny, deciduous or often at least partly persistent. Basal flowers functionally female but often with staminodes. Pedicels short c. 1 cm long. Young fruit pale green, glabrous, with the ovules in two rows per loculus. Mature fruit rich orange in colour, indehiscent, cylindrical, about three times as long as broad, blunt or bottle-nosed. Seeds very irregular, 6 - 7 mm in diameter, characteristically broader than deep, hilum depressed, umbo obsolete to prominent. Male peduncle descending vertically downwards, often becoming very long (3 m). Male bud imbricate, slender, from 3 - 4 times as long as broad. Occurring in the two colour forms : shiny brown or shiny green ; and, in New Ireland, with purple streaks and tips to the bracts. Male bracts shiny, coloured similarly to the male bud but paler on the adaxial surface, lifting to approximately a horizontal position to display the flowers and varying from tardily but completely deciduous to completely persistent. Male flower with the compound tepal nearly half as long again as the free tepal. Compound tepal cream sometimes with yellow tips to the lobes; free tepal translucent white, concave, ovate with a short broad acumen and no subapical wrinkle. Chromosome number 2n = 20. (Argent 1976).
References	Argent 1976 : 104, GRIN, Stover & Simmonds 1987.
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. Images: There is one image of Musa peekelii and an external image at APSF.