The Cavendish family has been one of the richest and most influential aristocratic families in England since the 16th century. They are descended from Sir John Cavendish of Cavendish in the county of Suffolk (c. 1346–1381), and have held the following peerages:
The dukedom of Devonshire
The dukedom of Newcastle
The barony of Waterpark
Cavendish bananas were named after William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire. A Cavendish banana is the fruit of a banana cultivar belonging to the Cavendish subgroup of the AAA cultivar group. The same term is also used to describe the plants on which the bananas grow.
Though they were not the first known banana specimens in Europe, in around 1834 Cavendish received a shipment of bananas (from Mauritius) courtesy of the chaplain of Alton Towers (then the seat of the Earls of Shrewsbury). His gardener, Sir Joseph Paxton cultivated them in the greenhouses of Chatsworth House. The plants were botanically described by Paxton as Musa cavendishii, after the Duke.
The Chatsworth bananas were shipped off to various places in the Pacific around the 1850s. It is believed that some of them may have ended up in the Canary Islands. In 1888, bananas from the Canary Islands were imported into England by Thomas Fyffe. These bananas are now known to belong the Dwarf Cavendish cultivar.
Cavendish bananas entered mass commercial production in 1903 but did not gain prominence until later when Panama disease attacked the dominant Gros Michel ("Big Mike") variety in the 1950s. Because they were successfully grown in the same soils as previously affected Gros Michel plants, many assumed the Cavendish cultivars were more resistant to Panama disease. Contrary to this notion, in mid-2008, reports from Sumatra and Malaysia suggest that Panama disease is starting to attack Cavendish-like cultivars, so you best proceed with Caution