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Concept
Musaceae
Summary
Musaceae is a family of flowering plants composed of three genera with about 91 known species, placed in the order Zingiberales. The family is native to the tropics of Africa and Asia. The plants have a large herbaceous growth habit with leaves with overlapping basal sheaths that form a pseudostem making some members appear to be woody trees. In most treatments, the family has three genera, Musa, Musella and Ensete. Cultivated bananas are commercially important members of the family, and many others are grown as ornamental plants.
The family has been practically universally recognized by taxonomists, although with differing circumscriptions. Older circumscriptions of the family commonly included the genera now included in Heliconiaceae and Strelitziaceae.
The APG III system, of 2009 (unchanged from the APG system, 1998), assigns Musaceae to the order Zingiberales in the clade commelinids in the monocots.
The oldest fossil evidence of the family is thought to possibly be the Late Cretaceous palynotaxon Spirematospermum chandlerae from North Carolina, unlike most other Spirematospermum species which are thought to represent members of Zingiberaceae. In contrast, "Musa" cardiosperma from the Maastrichtian Intertrappean Beds of India, formerly considered the earliest record of the genus Musa, is now thought to be a member of the Zingiberaceae and has been reclassified into the extinct genus Momordiocarpon. The oldest unequivocal fossil of the family is Ensete oregonense from the Eocene Clarno Formation of Oregon, although its actual placement within the family is uncertain.
As currently circumscribed the family includes three genera. All genera and species are native to the Old World tropics. The largest and most economically important genus in the family is Musa, famous for the banana and plantain. The genus Musa was formally established in the first edition of Linnaeus' Species Plantarum in 1753 — the publication that marks the start of the present formal botanical nomenclature.
Official source
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