There are hundreds of varieties. In the Seychelles alone, there are some thirty kinds, ranging in colour from yellow to green to dark red. Some are considered vegetables (like plantain), while others are looked on as fruit, commonly called dessert-bananas.

SPECIES

Musa coccinea

• Ornamental
• forms little tufts and small tulip-shaped scarlet flowers

Rhodochlamys

• Musa velutina / Sanguinea / Ornata / Laterita
• Ornamental
• a small banana plant whose inflorescence and fruits appear in a single row, pointing upward. The male inflorescence is bright red, brick or rose-coloured.

Musa ingens

• Huge
• The biggest of the bananas and certainly the largest known grass. The false trunk, or pseudostem, can reach 15 m in height with a circumference of 2 m at the base. Its leaves reach 5 m in length.

Musa acuminata

One of two species that were the origin of almost all known cultivated varieties. It is a thin banana tree whose inflorescence is usually horizontal and that bears many small fruits that bend upward.

Musa balbisiana

The other of the two species that were the origin of almost all known cultivated varieties. This is a hardy banana tree on which the bunch hangs down or sideways and which bears large fruit.

The most widespread varieties

Pisang lilin

• Indonesia
• A hardy variety that grows very easily in a large tuft. It bears a small bunch of S-shaped fruit, about as big as a finger, with delicately-flavoured flesh.

Sucrier or "Figue sucrée"

• West Indies
• the bunch weighs from 7 to 13 kg and bears 6 to 7 hands of small thin-skinned bananas, very sweet and soft textured

Gros Michel

• West Indies
• V. Raimbaud
• The so-called "Panama virus" forced authorities to ban its growth on plantations.

Cavendish

• Guadeloupe
• V. poyo
• V. small and large

Dwarf

• V. 901
• V. Williams

"Figue-pomme"

• West Indies
• soft with a slightly tart flavour. Its skin has a tendency to split when ripe.

Mysore

• India
• Its flavour is reminiscent of the figue-pomme, but the skin, which is thicker, does not split when ripe. Extremely hardy and resistant.

Figue Rose

• West Indies
• Purplish skin; very flavourful

Red Banana

• Seychelles
• shorter, firmer and sweeter
• it is ripe when the skin is flecked with many dark spots

Plantain

• See file

Popoulous

• New Caledonia
• plantain whose fruit has an extremely rounded end