What is the history of the noun 'false banana'?

What is the earliest usage of the noun 'false banana'?

The earliest use of the noun 'false banana' I can find is on 1837, but I expected it to be around 1700.

Also, I would like to know what the history of the noun is (who first used it, how the noun spread, etc)

Solution 1:

It certainly wouldn't be "around 1700", since apparently in 1769 the celebrated Scottish traveller James Bruce first sent a description back to England (of a tree common in ... Abyssinia).

I suspect OP's 1837 reference is actually this OCR error. The earliest I can find is the mid 1890s where several different "country names" are listed for...

The Asimina Triloba is commonly known as Custard Apple, Dog Banana, False-banana, Fetid-shrub, Indian Banana, Pawpaw, as well as Pawpaw-apple.

To save anyone the trouble of squinting to make out what it says in those 1890s links, it was apparently being called "false banana" in Illinois back then. But there's scope for confusion, because false xxxx is a common "popular name" format for plants¹, and I've no way of knowing whether OP is specifically interested in Asimina triloba or Ensete ventricosum. I'm guessing the first, since it's an economically important food plant, whereas the second is a decorative shrub, but obviously the name is/has been applied to both.

¹ Oregon State University Common Names for Landscape Plants includes 15 false xxxx entries.

Solution 2:

The first occurrence in Google Books of "false banana" is in a U.S. Department of Agriculture bulletin by George Sudworth, "Nomenclature of the Arborescent Flora of the United States" (1897). [My thanks to Hugo for pointing out my error in supposing that the reference to "false banana" was in an earlier bulletin, called "Some Foreign Trees for the Southern States" (1895), in the same Google Books bundle.] In Sudworth's bulletin, the common name "false banana" is associated with a plant whose Latin (genus and species) name is Asimina triloba; the more common name for the plant at that time was "papaw" (now "pawpaw"), but it was also known as "custard apple" (in several North American localities), "banana" (in Arkansas), "jasmine" or "jasminier" (in parts of Louisiana), "fetid shrub" (in parts of North Carolina), and "false banana" (in parts of Illinois).

The plant commonly known as "false banana" today is the Ensete ventricosum (also commonly known as "Ethiopian banana," "Abyssinian banana," and "ensete"). According to the Wikipedia article about it, the false banana's fruit is inedible, but its root is a staple food in the diets of some people who live in southern Ethiopia.

As for the history of the noun, it is simply a compound of "false" and a familiar plant that it isn't. The Some Foreign Trees book lists several similar common names: "false acacia," "false boxwood," "false box dogwood," false mahogany," and "false maple."

Your 1837 first occurrence date coincides with an erroneous "match" for "false banana" in Google Books—which is actually a citation of this quotation by Albert Barnes, appearing in a snippet view of text from William Jenks, Acts-Revelation (1838):

If they are in accordance with the first triumphs of the Gospel, they are genuine; if not, they are false. BARNES

Barnes published his Notes on the Bible in 1834, but he did not (to my knowledge) discuss false bananas.