Somewhere this morning I read something silly from a conservation whiner that the mainstream media would pay more attention to Paris Hilton taking a pee in South Africa, or 10 murders, than the loss of 10 wild species. I didn’t even bother to bookmark it, so familiar was the sentiment. To redress the balance, here’s an entirely new banana cultivar, heretofore unknown to science, spotted by Luigi on the proMusa website and shared with the world via Twitter. It was collected in Oman in 2003 or 2004 and grown on in Germany. I’m not sure yet what it is good for, although it is drought resistant. And “[t]he authors speculate that the variety, which they named Umq Bi’r, might have reached Oman many centuries ago via Zanzibar, Madagascar or the Comoros”. More interesting than Paris Hilton taking a pee? You bet!
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Crops, animals, wild relatives ...
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it doesn’t look particularly appetizing… i wonder if it’s unripe, or if other good Musa varieties look similar. anyway, very cool!
I was thinking I’d love to taste it! But I’m weird like that.