Ernest Entwistle Cheesman

Ernest Entwistle Cheesman (21 September 1898 Wood Green - 9 January 1983 Weybridge), was an English botanist noted in particular for his work on the banana family Musaceae.

Cheesman worked in Trinidad and Tobago in 1925-1937 as professor of botany at the Trinidad Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture.^[1] There, he published Flora of Trinidad and Tobago with R. O. Williams in 1929.

Cheesman also became interested in the cultivation of cocoa while in Trinidad and wrote a number of papers on the subject.

Returning to England, he worked on the taxonomy of Musaceae at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew during the 1940s.^[2]

As a result of his studies, he revived the genus Ensete in 1947 (Kew Bull. 1947, 97), which had first been published in 1862 by Paul Fedorowitsch Horaninow (1796-1865), but rejected. Cheesman made it clear that there are no wild Musa native to Africa, only Ensete, and that Ensete is monocarpic, has large seeds and 9 haploid chromosomes.^[3]

About bananas, Cheesman noted in 1948:^[4]

"Some botanists have regarded the seedless forms as ranking with the fertile species and have bestowed Latin binomials upon them. Others have preferred to regard them as varieties of one mythical "species" (usually called "Musa sapientum") which is supposed to exist somewhere in the wild and fertile condition … Such mistakes... are not peculiar to the genus "Musa", but they are unusually conspicuous in this group". Giving a seed-bearing wild species the status of subspecies to a seedless cultivar is a good example of the stultifying effect formal nomenclature has had on crop taxonomy.

N.W.Simmonds named the plant species Musa cheesmanii in tribute to Cheesman's work on the Musaceae. Simmonds was a 1950s research worker on Musaceae at the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture in Trinidad. Cheesman had worked at the college in the late 1920s and 1930s.^[5]

Cheesman was the son of Charles Cheesman and Grace Lizzie Davies. About August 1936, he married Ellen Elizabeth B. Weston (1892-1966).^[6][7]

• Cheesman, EE y RO Williams. 1928. Flora de Trinidad y Tobago . Puerto España, Trinidad. Imprenta del Gobierno.
• Cheesman, EE 1931 Mejora genética del banano en el Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture - Un informe de progreso. HM Stationery Office en Londres.
• Cheesman, EE 1932 Estudios genéticos y citológicos de Musa. I. Ciertos híbridos del banano Gros Michel Journal of Genetics 26: 291-312
• Cheesman EE 1935. La propagación vegetativa del cacao. Agricultura Tropical 12(9): 240-246.
• Cheesman EE 1936. La propagación vegetativa del cacao. VII.- Sistemas radiculares de esquejes. Página 7, láminas 3 y 4 en Quinto Informe Anual sobre Investigación del Cacao 1935, Trinidad.
• Cheesman EE 1941. Notas generales sobre los experimentos de campo CRB1 a CRB6. Páginas 4–11 del Décimo Informe Anual sobre Investigación del Cacao de 1940. Trinidad.
• Cheesman, EE 1947 Clasificación de los plátanos. II. El género Musa L. Kew Boletín 2: 106-117
• Cheesman, EE 1948a Clasificación de los plátanos. III. Notas críticas sobre las especies a. Musa balbisiana Colla. Boletín de Kew 3: 11-17
• Cheesman, EE 1948b Clasificación de los plátanos. III. Notas críticas sobre las especies b. Musa acuminata Colla. Boletín de Kew 3: 17-28