Will the real Musa haekkinenii please stand up?

Oh dear. The Musa taxonomists among you will have spotted that the wild banana species illustrated in the previous post, with Markku Häkkinen standing beside it, was not the new species he recently discovered in Vietnam but rather Musa viridis. Markku is understandably a bit incensed about it and asked us to correct ScienceNordic’s error. We are happy to do so, with apologies for perpetuating the mistake, and to publish below Markku’s photo of the real Musa haekkinenii. I knew I should have waited for ProMusa to do its thing.

Musa haekkinenii (photo by Markku Häkkinen)
Musa haekkinenii (photo by Markku Häkkinen)

2 Replies to “Will the real Musa haekkinenii please stand up?”

  1. Apologies for the delay in doing our thing. The Musapedia page on Musa haekkinenii is now online at http://bit.ly/Wr8mSZ. Although the species was named in honour of Markku Hakkinen, it won’t go down in history as having been discovered by him. The botanists who described the species are Ngoc-Sam Ly and Agathe Haevermans. And even though his name doesn’t appear at the bottom of the Musapedia page, Markku did review its content and kindly provided photographs. We are therefore fairly confident that we pinned down the real Musa haekkinenii!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *