Bananas ( Musa spp . ) and plantains develop from the same types of plants , differing only in the amount of sweet sugar or blander starch in the fruits produced . Although often cry " banana tree , " the industrial plant are actually tropic herbs that grow from fleshy underground roots called rootstock or corms . Today there are hundreds of unlike banana / plantains in beingness because of human beings ’s selection and breeding to produce plants with varying fruit size , colors and flavors as well as better resistance to plant disease .

General Plant Type

Banana industrial plant are angiosperms ( blossoming plants ) and are further characterized as liliopsid , more commonly called liliopsid . Monocots have a single come leaf , parallel leaf mineral vein , no cambium layer and flowered section in multiple of three . The lack of a cambium layer in banana tree plants is the reason they technically can not be call tree diagram , even though some can develop 20 to 30 feet marvelous .

Family Designation

The banana is place into the botanic folk Musaceae , known simply as the banana tree family . Both banana tree and plantain works are further grouped together into the genus Musa , separating them from the only other genus in the kin , Ensete . Since Muscaceae is a family of monocots , other closely have-to doe with families let in the heliconia family line ( Heliconiaceae ) and bird - of - heaven household ( Strelitziaceae ) .

The Genus Musa

There are about 35 different species of banana / plantain in the genus Musa , with beginning of all the plants being tropical southern and southeastern Asia and extreme northern Australia . Modern plants that bring out comestible fruits typically have lineage centering on the species Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana .

Taxonomic Sections

According to the Species Profiles for Pacific Island Agroforestry , banana tree were broken into five , now four , sections within the Musa mob based on plant and yield characteristics and/or region of nascency . The names of the current four section are Australimusa , Callimusa , Musa and Rhodochlamys . Most comestible banana / plantains are from the sections Australimusa and Musa , while those plants view more as ornamental plants remain in Callimusa and Rhodochlamys .

Ploidy and Modern Breeding

Most comestible banana tree originate from two mintage in the surgical incision genus Musa : genus Musa acuminata ( A ) and Musa balbisiana ( B ) . Complex cross of banana extend to new plants , called culitvars , that typically have change amounts of chromosomes from either of these two species . Ploidy refer to the issue of chromosome sets ( genome ) in the jail cell of banana plants . The natural number of chromosomes is considered diploid , such as AA for Musa acuminata and BB for Musa balbasiana .

inherited handling results in newfangled plant that combine chromosome from these parent flora . Triploid genomes ( like AAB , AAA , ABB ) as well as tetraploid types ( AAAA , AABB , etc . ) can be create . The vast bulk of edible bananas worldwide today are triploids , according to the Species Profiles for Pacific Island Agroforestry . Interestingly , bananas with BB and BBB genomes do not effectively produce eatable banana tree fruit .

Cultivars

Among the most name - recognizable bananas are those equivocally call " Cavendish , " which refers to a sizable number of works with triploid genome ( AAA ) . Cultivar public figure of plants in this radical of eatable let in ' Giant Cavendish , ' ' Dwarf Cavendish ' and ' Extra Dwarf Cavendish . ' Another group of triploid bananas are those called " Pacific plantains " ( AAB ) and let in cultivars like ' Pome , ' ' Silk ' and ' French . ' In fact , allot to Species Profiles for Pacific Island Agroforestry , the cultivar ' French ' is ordinarily label as Musa paradisiaca , which is actually a crossbreed derived from Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana , not a species .

References

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