Promusa has just released two blog posts about the naming of cultivated banana trees. And it is a true headache! One of the relevant issues for iNaturalist, is to know whether they should or no, handle this classification.

"Check out our blog on how Linnaeus inadvertently muddled the taxonomy of bananas when he gave Latin names to two edible bananas. The fact that assigning Latin binomials didn't work for edible bananas does not in any way diminish his achievements. The nomenclature system he pioneered is for classifying species that have been shaped by natural selection, not crops that are the product of artificial selection. Especially a crop, which like bananas, has a complex history of domestication http://www.promusa.org/blogpost612-Linnaeus-s-banana-legacy

In the second installment of this two-part series on the classification of edible bananas, we present the only viable alternative to Latin binomials: the informal nomenclature system developed by Norman Simmonds and Kenneth Shepherd in the 1950s. Although it has proved useful to scientists, it needs tweaking and advocates to promote it. http://www.promusa.org/blogpost614-Modernizing-Simmonds-and-Shepherd-s-legacy"