Description:

• Large, thick-stemmed, glabrous herbs with erect, unbranched stem (pseudostem) broadening towards rarely suckering base, stem formed by imbricated bases of petioles, dying after flowering
• Leaves spirally arranged, simple, large, with thick midrib and numerous pinnately-parallel nerves extending to margin; petiole expanded, sheathing
• Flowers mostly unisexual, irregular, aggregated into fans in axils of bracts, forming pendulous bunches; female or bisexual flowers within lower deciduous bracts and male flowers subtended by ± persistent upper bracts
• Perianth segments 6 in 2 whorls, but outer 3 and inner 2 reduced to teeth or lobes of a tube split along 1 side, with the third inner one free
• Stamens 5 or 6, perfect, the sixth sometimes rudimentary; filaments filiform; anthers linear, 2-thecous, thecae parallel and contiguous
• Ovary inferior, 3-locular, each locule with many ovules on an axile placenta; style short; stigma 3-5-lobed
• Fruit fleshy, indehiscent, inedible, 3-locular
• Seeds subglobose with a thick hard black testa, with conspicuous hilum
• x = 9 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Musaceae
  • Cheesman: 97 (1947)
  • Hutchinson: 719 (1973)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 2, species ± 45, tropics of Old World
• Southern Africa: Genus 1, species 1; however, species of *Musa L. (1318000), the edible bananas, which constitute an important industry in subtropical, frost-free areas of Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal, very occasionally appear as escapes

References:

• CHEESMAN, E.E. 1947. Classification of the bananas. 1. The genus Ensete Horan. Kew Bulletin 1947
• HUTCHINSON, J. 1973. Families of flowering plants, edn 3. Clarendon Press, Oxford

Resources:

• Musaceae genus: Ensete