The trunk (known as the pseudostem) is made of tightly packed layers of leaf sheaths emerging from completely or partially buried corms.

[8] The leaves are at the top of the leaf sheaths, or petioles and in the subspecies M. a. truncata the blade or lamina is up to 22 feet (6.7 m) in length and 39 inches (0.99 m) wide.

[10] Each seed of M. acuminata typically produces around four times its size in edible starchy pulp (the parenchyma, the portion of the bananas eaten), around 0.23 cm3 (230 mm3; 0.014 cu in).

[8][12] Wild M. acuminata is diploid with 2n=2x=22 chromosomes, while cultivated varieties (cultivars) are mostly triploid (2n=3x=33) and parthenocarpic, meaning producing fruit without seeds.

These high yielding cultivars were produced through selection of the natural mutations resulting from the normal vegetative propagation of banana farming.

[14] M. acuminata was first described by the Italian botanist Luigi Aloysius Colla in the book Memorie della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino (1820).

The following are the most commonly accepted subspecies:[14] Musa acuminata is native to the biogeographical region of Malesia and most of mainland Indochina.

[14] M. acuminata favors wet tropical climates in contrast to the hardier M. balbisiana, the species it hybridized extensively with to provide almost all modern cultivars of edible bananas.

[19] Early farmers introduced M. acuminata into the native range of M. balbisiana resulting in hybridization and the development of modern edible clones.

[19] Westward spread included Africa which already had evidence of M. acuminata × M. balbisiana hybrid cultivation from as early as 1000 to 400 BCE.

These include frugivorous bats, birds, squirrels, tree shrews, civets, rats, mice, monkeys, and apes.

[11] In 1955, Norman Simmonds and Ken Shepherd revised the classification of modern edible bananas based on their genetic origins.

[23] Musa acuminata is one of the earliest plants to be domesticated by humans for agriculture, 7,000 years ago in New Guinea and Wallacea.

The cultivar M. acuminata 'Dwarf Cavendish' (AAA Group) has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.