A Japanese banana in northern Italy

An advert in a local gardening magazine for something called Freddi Banana, supposedly a cold-tolerant banana “developed” in the northern Italian region of Alto Adige, led me down some interesting online byways. In one place it is a cross between a Japanese and a Nepalese variety, in another its origin is given as Ryukyu Islands, Japan. That’s the chain stretching from Taiwan to Japan. I found the whole thing hard to believe, but a little research revealed that there is indeed a Musa species in the Ryukyu Islands. This is Musa basjoo, and it is the most cold-hardy of bananas. Various cultivars are available commercially.

Musa basjoo is commonly referred to as the Japanese Fibre Banana and it’s native place is given as the Ryukyu (Liu Kiu) Islands. However, Musa basjoo is not the Japanese Fibre Banana. Musa basjoo is not from the Liu Kiu Islands and not from Japan, it is a Chinese species.

So what is the Japanese Fibre Banana, I hear you ask?

The true identity of the Japanese Fibre Banana became known only in the aftermath of Japan’s defeat in WWII when the Ryukyu Islands came under the control of the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands (USCAR). USCAR brought to Okinawa Egbert H. Walker, a staff member of the Department of Botany, Smithsonian Institution who was in charge of the Serviceman’s Collecting Program (SCP) in which US forces members were encouraged to collect and submit botanical and other specimens. But Walker was no desk-bound administrator of the SCP. He was an accomplished field botanist and developed a thorough knowledge of the Ryukyu flora. His work, during which he personally collected over 7,000 plant specimens on Okinawa and neighbouring islands, culminated in his Flora of Okinawa (Walker 1976). Walker made no mention of M. basjoo in this work but did include the ito-basho, Musa liukiuensis, after the treatment of which he commented:

“Seeds from plants [of Musa liukiuensis] in Oku [village in northern Okinawa] were grown in Kingston, Jamaica by the Banana Breeding Scheme of the Banana Board. The seed, seedlings and flowers were reported in 1973 to be identical with those of Musa balbisiana Colla.”

Called ito basho, or “thread banana,” the Japanese Fibre Banana is very important in Ryukyu tradition, much like abacá, a different fibre-producing Musa species, is in the Philippines.

In the old days, bolts of plain-colored, striped and kasuri (ikat) basho-fu were woven in numerous locations across the Ryukyu islands and were used as tribute payments to the Okinawan royalty. In those days, basho-fu was worn by everyone from kings to commoners. Nowadays, however, basho-fu is a luxury cloth that is made only in the village of Kijoka, on the island of Okinawa.

“I find that no Plants were as yet collected for His Majestys Garden at Kew”

Smithsonian Magazine has a long, wonderful piece this month about the breadfruit — and Captain Bligh — in Jamaica. It’s by Caroline Alexander, who wrote a book on the famous mutiny, The Bounty. People forget that after the Bounty debacle in 1789, Bligh eventually, doggedly went back to the Pacific and completed his original mission of taking breadfruit to the Caribbean. In 1793, the Providence finally delivered its Tahitian cargo to Jamaica. Its descendants are still there. There’s a companion piece on cooking with breadfruit which includes Diana Ragone’s (of the Breadfruit Institute) recipe for her tasty breadfruit nachos. You can become a fan of the Breadfruit Institute on Facebook, which is how I got to the Smithsonian piece.

The Glass Orchard

Driving from Ames to Des Moines last week, my friend Tom told me about Harvard’s Glass Flowers — more officially the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants. It’s a fascinating story. They

…are a set of approximately 3,000 life-size models of plants made out of glass, with occasional bits of wire, paint, and glue. The collection is owed by Harvard University, where the models are on display in the Harvard Museum of Natural History. George Lincoln Goodale, the first director of the Harvard Botanical Museum, commissioned the models in 1886 from Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka, a father and son team of glassmakers based in Hosterwitz, near Dresden. The Blaschkas produced the models over 50 years, Leopold until his death in 1895 and Rudolph until his retirement at age 79 in 1936.

They’re not just beautiful, they’re supposed to be useful too, aids to the study of tropical botany in particular.

There are many fruits and fibers in the collection, Rossi-Wilcox explained, ((Susan Rossi-Wilcox is a curatorial associate at the Botanical Museum.)) as well as other “useful” plants. “The Botanical Museum’s whole mission is ‘economic botany.’ Cotton, silk, the food we eat … We’re this odd little sister of taxonomy. The point of making this collection was to make people understand plants that were common in their lives.”

Some of the latest — and the best — of the Blaschka models are the series Rudolf made on the diseases of fruit trees. The “rotten fruit” series, Rossi-Wilcox affectionately called them. “They are the most spectacular models he made,” she said. “They’re animated, realistic. The cut sections don’t have the mealiness of real disease, but as fruit, he’s got it — all the little weirdnesses of the colors. Anyone who has fruit trees has seen these things.

I can’t find a full list of the “164 plant families, totaling 847 species and plant varieties” represented by the models. But I have found photographs of Musa paradisiaca, Prunus armeniaca and Gossypium herbaceum. And there is also an Emperor Alexander Apple “affected by apple scab disease”. So agrobiodiversity seems to be well represented.

Nibbles: Pluots, Village chickens, Axolotl, Artisanal fishing, Fruit and climate change, Stamps, Hornless cattle, Artemisin for malaria, Aquatic agroecosystems characterization, Speciation and ploidy