Credit: © The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.10141
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    Clifford’s banana plant

    Date
    1736
    After
    Martin Hoffman (Dutch) , Artist
    Object type
    Library reference
    Tracts/X238_4
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (print): 355mm
    width (print): 254mm
    Subject
    Biology
       > Botany
    Content object
    nature
       > plant
    Description
    Botanical study of a banana plant belonging to the banker and Dutch East India Company director George Clifford (1685-1760). Clifford’s estate and gardens were at Hartenkamp in Holland. This banana was grown there in a heated glasshouse and is thought to a hybrid of Musa acuminate and Musa balbisiana and therefore a cultivar plantain. It was among the first, if not the first, plant of this type to fruit in Europe.

    Plate 1 from the monograph Musa Cliffortiana florens Hartecampi 1736 prope Harlemum, by Carl Linnaeus (Leiden, 1736). Inscribed upper right “pag. 46” and on the rim of the pot “Musa forens Hartecampi 1736.”

    Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) Swedish botanist and physician was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1753.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Netherlands
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