This relative of the edible banana is a valuable landscaping plant. Its form, texture and large leaves with conspicuous red midribs, create a lush, tropical effect.
Ensete ventricosum is a large, fleshy-stemmed plant with a head of banana-like leaves. The plant grows between 15 and 20 feet high. It is a monocotyledon and does not have a true, branched trunk, but an unbranched pseudostem formed by the imbricated (overlapping) bases of petioles (leaf stalks), left behind when old leaves die. The pseudostem broadens towards the base and this gives rise to the species name ventricosum, which means 'with a swelling'. The plant seldom forms suckers from the base. The simple, large leaves with a thick, rose-pink midrib and numerous pinnately parallel nerves extending to the margin, are spirally arranged.
This plant only flowers and bears fruit once and then it dies. The flowers form large, showy bunches or spikes 2 to 3 m in length. The male flowers usually occur at the top and the female or bisexual flowers lower down. The cream-coloured flowers have only one petal, but are surrounded by large, showy, maroon bracts. Flowering usually takes place in early summer (October and November). Insipid, banana-like fruits form after flowering. They have a yellow skin with black spots and contain a row of pea-sized, hard, black seeds. Under normal conditions plants flower when they are about eight years old.