Ensete ventricosum

Ensete ventricosum, commonly known as the Ethiopian banana, Abyssinian banana,false banana, or ensete, is an herbaceous species of flowering plant in the genus Ensete of the banana family Musaceae. The name Ensete ventricosum was first published in 1948 in the Kew Bulletin, 1947, p. 101. Its synonyms include Musa arnoldiana De Wild., Musa ventricosa Welw. and Musa ensete J.F.Gmel. It is native to the eastern edge of the Great African Plateau, extending northwards from the Transvaal through Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to Ethiopia, and west to the Congo, being found in high rainfall forests on mountains, and along forested ravines and streams.

Description

Like bananas, Ensete ventricosum is large non-woody plant — a gigantic monocarpic evergreen perennial herb (not a tree) — up to 6 m (20 ft) tall. It has a stout pseudostem of tightly overlapping leaf bases, and large banana-like leaf blades of up to 5 m (16 ft) tall by 1 m (3 ft 3 in) wide, with a salmon-pink midrib. The flowers, which only occur once from the centre of the plant at the end of that plant's life, are in massive pendant thyrses covered by large pink bracts. The fruits are inedible and have hard, black, rounded seeds. After flowering the plant dies back.