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6 days ago · banana, fruit of the genus Musa, of the family Musaceae, one of the most important fruit crops of the world. The banana is grown in the tropics, and, though it is most widely consumed in those regions, it is valued worldwide for its flavour, nutritional value, and availability throughout the year.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Bibliography. External links. Banana. A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry [1] – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus Musa. In some countries, cooking bananas are called plantains, distinguishing them from dessert bananas.
- Fruit
- Musa
- Food
The genus includes 83 species of flowering plants producing edible bananas and plantains. Though they grow as high as trees, banana and plantain plants are not woody and their apparent "stem" is made up of the bases of the huge leaf stalks. Thus, they are technically gigantic herbaceous plants.
Banana is the common name for any of the very large, tree-like, herbaceous plants comprising the genus Musa of the flowering plant family Musaceae, characterized by an above-ground pseudostem (false stem) with a terminal crown of large leaves, and hanging clusters of edible, elongated fruit.
Musaceae, the banana family of plants (order Zingiberales), consisting of 2 genera, Musa and Ensete, with about 50 species native to Africa, Asia, and Australia. The common banana ( M. sapientum) is a subspecies of the plantain ( M. paradisiaca ). Both are important food plants.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
There are about fifty recognized species of banana, all under the genus Musa, but given the long history of banana hybridization, and the creation of plants with two or three sets of chromosomes (diploid and triploid), it can be difficult for the casual observer to distinguish between banana varieties.
Musa acuminata is a species of banana native to Southern Asia, its range comprising the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia. Many of the modern edible dessert bananas are from this species, although some are hybrids with Musa balbisiana. [5] .
