Family Musaceae - Banana Family

Musaceae (Banana family) is a small family - only 2 genera, Musa and Ensete, and 81 species - found mainly in wet tropical lowlands from West Africa to the Pacific; APG has separated the four genera Ravenala, Strelitzia, Orchidantha and Heliconia out of the older, wider Musaceae into their own families. Habit: large perennial herbs perennating by a rhizome (Musa), rarely trees (Ravenala madagascariensis). Root: fibrous, adventitious. Stem: the REAL stem is an underground rhizome; what looks like an aerial trunk is a pseudostem - long, stiff, sheathy leaf bases rolled around one another - concealing a central axis (the shaft) that elongates and pierces through at flowering to bear the inflorescence terminally; Musa is monocarpic (flowers/fruits once in its lifetime). Leaf: simple, large, broad, with a sheathy base, exstipulate, numerous parallel veins to the margin, rolled in the bud; spirally arranged in Musa. Inflorescence: a terminal/axillary spadix protected by large, brightly coloured, spirally arranged, boat-shaped bracts called a spathe. Flower: bracteate, sessile, trimerous, zygomorphic, epigynous; often polygamous in Musa (staminate, pistillate and bisexual flowers all present on the same plant). Perianth: 6 tepals in two whorls of 3; in most Musa species the three outer tepals and two lateral inner tepals fuse into a 5-toothed tube called the abaxial lip, while the free, broad, membranous posterior inner median tepal is the labellum. Androecium: 5-6 stamens in two whorls of 3, opposite the tepals; in Musa only 5 are fertile (the inner posterior stamen is absent or a staminode); Ravenala has all 6 fertile. Gynoecium: tricarpellary, syncarpous, trilocular, inferior ovary, axile placentation, septal nectaries present. Fruit: an elongated berry in bunches (Musa), a capsule in Ravenala. …