[Sca-cooks] Plantain, herbals,

[Terry Decker]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "otsisto" <otsisto at socket.net>

*I had assumed that when I said SCA period that it was specifying European,
and Mediterranean with the possible inclusion of middle and far East.
To my understanding plantain musa originated in Malaysia and India and moved
along with the banana and yam westward.
I found one research that says that hybridizing of the banana and plantain
has been going on since before the middle ages and that they had found that
the two original Musas from which all musa hybrids come from are Musa
balbisiana and Musa acuminata.
In their research they had found that quite a few horticulturalist and
herbals misnamed, wrong identification or lumped together the banana and
plantian.

********************

The earliest evidencce of banana domestication is found in Papua New Guinea 
and dates from 6000-5000 BCE.  The cultivated bananas (those requiring human 
intervention) may have begun there or have been developed from bananas from 
New Guinea being spread through Indonesia, Malaysia and into SE Asia.

All cultivated Musa (as opposed to all Musa hybrids) are hybrids between M 
acuminata and M. balbisiana.  The original hybridization was natural and 
took place well before the Middle Ages.  These hybrids are diploidal, 
triploidal and tetraploidal, meaning they have two, three or four sets of 
chromosomes.  For example, you find a Musa taxonomic name followed by (ABB), 
you are looking at a triploidal hybrid with one set of M. acuminata 
chromosomes and two sets of M. balbisiana chromosomes.  The eating or 
dessert bananas fall into the (AAA) group while the rest are generally 
considered cooking bananas.  For our purposes, we can probably ignore the 
tetraploidal hybrids as modern.

Prior to Linneaus (1737), there was no taxonomic distinction between bananas 
and plantains, which is why herbal information on the cultivated bananas can 
be very confusing.  Linnean taxonomy places the cultivated bananas as Musa 
paradisiaca with the eating bananas being M. paradisiaca ssp. sapientium. 
Modernly, eating bananas, being triploidal M. acuminata, are considered to 
be M. acuminata although the Linnean taxonomy has also been retained.

Bear