The genus includes 83 species of flowering plants producing edible bananas and plantains, and fiber (abacá), used to make paper and cloth.

[2][3] Though they grow as high as trees, banana and plantain plants are not woody and their apparent "stem" is made up of the bases of the huge leaf stalks.

Further qualities to distinguish Musa include spirally arranged leaves, fruits as berries, the presence of latex-producing cells, flowers with five connate tepals and one member of the inner whorl distinct, and a petiole with one row of air channels.

[13] From the time of Linnaeus until the 1940s, different types of edible bananas and plantains were given Linnaean binomial names, such as Musa cavendishii, as if they were species.

In fact, edible bananas have an extremely complicated origin involving hybridization, mutation, and finally selection by humans.

[citation needed] As for the word banana, it came to English from Spanish and Portuguese, which had apparently obtained it from a West African language, possibly Wolof (Senegal).

[20] Unlike sectional classifications of the past, this hypothesis was based on genetic markers rather than morphological features or chromosome number.

The World Checklist of Selected Plant Families accepts 68 species and two primary hybrids, as of January 2013[update], which are listed below.

By far the largest and now the most widely distributed group of cultivated bananas is derived from section Musa, particularly M. acuminata and M. balbisiana, either alone or in various hybrid combinations.

The next but much smaller group is derived from members of section Callimusa (previously classified as Australimusa) and is restricted in importance to Polynesia.

[citation needed] Banana and plantains are the fourth most produced food globally surpassed only by the staple crops of rice, wheat and maize.

including roots, flowers and fruits have been used in the folk medicine cultures of Africa, Asia, India and the Americas.

Modern studies examining the properties of the fruits have found diversity of bioactive compounds among genotypes compared with commercially grown cultivars.

The "new" name shows clearly that 'Dwarf Cavendish' is a triploid, with three sets of chromosomes, all derived from Musa acuminata, which is designated by the letter "A".

In the genome of edible bananas from section Musa, combinations such as AA, BB, ABB, BBB and even AAAB can be found.

Investigations are under way to use the Fe'i karat bananas (the name derives from "carrot" due to the intense orange-yellow color of the fruit) in prevention of childhood blindness in Pohnpei.

[32] The leaves are used in several cultures as cooking wrappers, such as for Puerto Rican pasteles or Indonesian pepes, and for food plating.