Botanists from the University of Calicut in Kerala, India, have described a new species in the genus Musa.
Musa arunachalensis. Image credit: Sreejith PE et al.
Musa, a plant genus native to the Indo-Malesian, Asian, and Australian tropics, produces the fourth most important food in the world.
The species in this genus are large, perennial herbs, up to 9 m in height. Fruits are generally elongate-cylindrical, straight to strongly curved, up to 40 cm long, and up to 8 cm in diameter.
There are five subgenera in the genus Musa – Australimusa, Callimusa, Musa, Rhodochlamys and Ingentimusa, two of which contain edible bananas.
The newly discovered species, named Musa arunachalensis, belongs to the subgenus Rhodochlamys.
Rhodochlamys bananas are characterized by having erect or drooping inflorescences with fruit pointing towards the apex of the inflorescence.
Most of them have relatively few fruits and are best known for their brightly colored bracts (small leaf at the base of a flower), a feature that makes them popular as ornamental plants.
Musa arunachalensis is known from specimens found in West Kameng District, Arunachal Pradesh, northeastern India.
This species flowers and fruits from January to May and differs from other Musa species in the nature of its inflorescence. The color of the bract is reddish orange with a yellow tip.
The description of Musa arunachalensis has been published online in the journal Phytotaxa (abstract in .pdf).
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Sreejith PE et al. 2014. Musa arunachalensis: a new species of Musa section Rhodochlamys (Musaceae) from Arunachal Pradesh, northeastern India. Phytotaxa, vol. 134, no. 1; doi: 10.11646/phytotaxa.134.1.4
