Abstract

Although there seems little reason to doubt that the banana was one of the first foods of man and that it was one of the first plants cultivated, its specific and varietal relations have never been well defined. For want of a proper approach to the problem of classification and nomenclature, the various attempts to study these plants have only resulted in chaos. Based on the extensive collection of the species of Musa at the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, Trinidad, Cheesman (1947, 1948, 1949) has recently discussed the subject in a series of articles under the caption "Classification of the bananas". His publications really deal with the genus Musa as a whole and not on the edible bananas as such. It is, therefore, necessary to point out that the word banana has been used by him in these papers in a very wide sense and it covers both the fertile (wild and seeded) and the parthenocarpie (edible) forms.

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