Abstract

Taking the malformed structure found in the staminate flowers of the majority of bananas as the normal one, an early Botanist, in the absence of the usual sepals and petals, named the large structure found in the place of the sepal as Perigonium. It has three major lobes alternating with two minor ones at the sinuses. He named the structure found in the place of the petal as Scale. Many years later, Dr. E. E. Cheesman also taking the above mentioned malformed structure as the normal part of staminate flowers of bananas, changed the name of those structures as Compound tepal and Free tepal and they are in vogue at present. Simmonds (1959) has given prominence to this in his book, "Bananas".

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