Credit: © The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.10142
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    ‘Musa Cliffortiana’ [Clifford’s banana plant]

    Date
    1736
    After
    Martin Hoffman (Dutch) , Artist
    Object type
    Library reference
    Tracts/X238_4
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (print): 392mm
    width (print): 520mm
    Subject
    Biology
       > Botany
    Content object
    nature
       > plant
    Description
    Botanical studies of the leaves, flowers, stamen and other structures 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 2 from the monograph Musa Cliffortiana florens Hartecampi 1736 prope Harlemum, by Carl Linnaeus (Leiden, 1736). Inscribed above “MUSA CLIFFORTIANA” and upper right “pag. ultima”.

    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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