Bananas and Food Security - Bioversity International

184 Les productions bananières / Bananas and food security – Session 1
Cultivar classification and nomenclature
Faced with the large number of cultivars and an even larger number of vernacular
names, as well as with varying cultivar descriptions in the different sources, a more
practical system of nomenclature and classification had to be developed which, at the
same time, would be economical and clear. Therefore, instead of cultivar names in a
modern language such as “Wine Plantain”, attractive as they may sound, it was chosen to
use descriptive phrase names. These names consist of the essential morphological
descriptors of the cultivars, but leave the default descriptors unmarked. This allows for a
juxtaposition of variant and/or incomplete descriptions of the same cultivar (by various
authors). Moreover, such phrase names can be arranged in a synoptic key, to which
further information, for instance on vernacular names and/or on distribution, may be
added (see Tables 1 and 2).
In this way, we can visualise the distribution patterns of plantain diversity, as well as
the main outlines of plantain expansion on the African continent. This expansion has a
geographical, a genetic (types and numbers of cultivars) and a numerical (numbers of
plants cultivated) dimension. Although the numerical dimension can neither be known
nor captured in this representation, it can be more or less inferred from the patterns of
diversity.
Another advantage of this system is that each cultivar is presented together with its
“feature bundle”, which make separate cultivar descriptions redundant. Finally, it builds
on what is common practise already, for instance the use of terms like “French Clair
Moyen” among francophone researchers.
Folk-taxonomy and vernacular names
When we talk about musa (folk-)taxonomy, we have to realise that the musa domain is a
continuum in which we can distinguish different taxonomic levels, that languages may
divide the musa domain in different ways and that every language has its own inventory
of musa names
As a result, we can find names for musa in general, names for the various musa crops
or cultivar groups, names for groups of cultivars that share certain features, names for
individual cultivars and names for the various parts of the plant. As for the latter, the
musa plant can equally be understood as forming a kind of continuum that may be
divided in different ways.
Furthermore, the division of the musa domain, as expressed in the musa names of
languages, may tell us something about the importance of a musa crop with respect to
other crops in the areas where these languages are spoken. This relative importance is
usually inversely related to the degree of inclusiveness of musa names and can be linked
to agronomic, cultural and ecological factors. The latter, in their turn, can also be linked
to the patterns of distribution and incidence of plantain diversity.
Another important point concerns the motivation behind vernacular musa names.
Apparently, the Africa farmer, and thus folk-taxonomy, is not only concerned with
morphological details (see Hunn 1982), but also with other interesting details of the