Abstract
Mostly tall and robust, suckering or monocarpic herbs with gigantic leaves; stem massive, cormlike; leaf sheaths forming pseudostem around scape; lateral buds absent or leaf-opposed. Leaves alternate, spirally arranged, differentiated into sheath, petiole and blade; sheath without distinct ligule; blade entire (but often split due to wind action), with coarse, compound midrib and closely set, parallel, slightly sigmoid lateral veins fusing near margin; lateral veins interconnected by tertiary cross-veins. Inflorescence a terminal thyrse, bearing cincinnate flower clusters in axils of spathaceous bracts on an indeterminate main axis. Flowers ebracteolate, functionally unisexual with male flowers in distal part of inflorescence and female ones in proximal part (rarely bisexual flowers in proximal part), trimerous and 5-cyclic, heterochlamydeous, zygomorphic; unpaired outer tepal in anterior (abaxial) position; outer tepals fused mutually and with 2 inner tepals into 5-dentate or 5-lobate lamina; adaxial inner tepal free, small; stamens usually 5, the missing stamen then mostly staminodial, or occasionally 6; filaments free from each other, narrow and filiform; anthers basifixed, elongate, 2-thecate, 4-sporangiate. Ovary inferior, 3-locular; ovules anatropous, numerous on axile placentae; style 1, filiform, often dilated distally. Fruit a baccate, mostly indehiscent capsule; seeds operculate, exarillate, with scanty perisperm and copious starchy endosperm.
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Andersson, L. (1998). Musaceae. In: Kubitzki, K. (eds) Flowering Plants · Monocotyledons. The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants, vol 4. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03531-3_33
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03531-3_33
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