Plant · P-034

Banana

Musa acuminata

Despite the trunk-like stem, this is the tallest herb in the world - a giant rhizome that throws up disposable false stems made only of rolled leaf sheaths. The cultivated fruit comes from a seedless triploid form, so every plant is grown from a sucker cut off the parent rhizome rather than from seed, and each stem flowers once, fruits once, then gets cut down to make way for the next one coming up from the same clump. It wants year-round warmth and steady moisture and stops growing below about 13 C, dying back to the ground at freezing and staying killed if the root mass is not insulated; its broad leaves shred badly in strong wind and the whole plant can blow over in wet soil. Beyond the fruit, the leaves and trimmed stems are a real livestock feed, and the discarded stem breaks down fast into a nutrient-rich mulch.