Ensete ventricosum ‘Maurelii’

Ethiopian black banana (or Abyssinian red banana)

The tropical style planting in front of South Lodge on the Thompson Road drive this year extends round the cottage, giving an even more spectacular effect.  The most dramatic plant contributing to this is E. ventricosum ‘Maurelii’, with  its huge paddle shaped leaves, olive green with red midribs and rich burgundy developing on the undersides.  These don’t shred in wind as the other banana related plants do.  It is a fast-growing herbaceous perennial which can reach 3m by 2m.

 The Gardens’ staff grew these plants from little plugs 4 or 5 years ago, nurturing them under glass through the winters.  A surprise this year was the appearance of a flower on one of the plants which is growing in the East Ridge and Furrow section of the pavilions. The RHS, who have bestowed their prestigious Award of Garden Merit on it, state that flowers are rarely produced in cultivation, and the supplier of the plug plants mark ‘N/A’ under ‘flowering time’!

The species, E. ventricosum, known to the Ethiopians as ‘Enset’ is a vitally important crop used by 20 million of the population with 15 plants feeding one family for a year.  Several food staples are produced from the leaf stems and the corms, animal feed comes from the midribs and a fibre by-product is used in rope and basket making.  Mainly women do the labour intensive processing which requires special traditional skills.  Kew research shows that the huge number of wild varieties of Enset tolerate different climate conditions and one plant can produce 400 suckers.  Whatever the season, it can be harvested and stored by burying underground for up to six months.  All this means the plant could be very important for food security.  A further use of Enset is as a shade plant, enabling intercropping with vegetables, avocados and coffee - cash cropping without abandoning food growing.

The cultivar is named in honour of one M. Maurel, a French plant collector around the end of the 19th century.