Ensete superbum
Encyclopedia
Ensete superbum is a species of banana
Banana
Banana is the common name for herbaceous plants of the genus Musa and for the fruit they produce. Bananas come in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple, and red....

 from India.

Distribution

The plant is well-known from the Western Ghats
Western Ghats
The Western Ghats, Western Ghauts or the Sahyādri is a mountain range along the western side of India. It runs north to south along the western edge of the Deccan Plateau, and separates the plateau from a narrow coastal plain along the Arabian Sea. The Western Ghats block rainfall to the Deccan...

, Anaimalai Hills
Anaimalai Hills
The Anaimalai Hills is a range of mountains in the Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu and Kerala states of South India. The name "Anaimalai" derives from the Tamil word 'Ana' meaning elephant and 'Mala' meaning hill, thus Elephant Hill. The highest peak of the Anaimalai Hills is Anamudi, , located in the...

, some other South India
South India
South India is the area encompassing India's states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry, occupying 19.31% of India's area...

n hills in Dindigul
Dindigul
Dindigul is a town and municipality in the Tamil Nadu state of southern India. The name Dindigul comes from the Portmanteau of “Thindu” meaning pillow and “kal” meaning Rock and refers to the bare hill dominating the city’s both land and skyscape...

 and other parts of the peninsular India. It has also been recorded from Jhadol and Ogna forest ranges in Rajastan, North India
North India
North India, known natively as Uttar Bhārat or Shumālī Hindustān , is a loosely defined region in the northern part of India. The exact meaning of the term varies by usage...

. There are also reports of a similar species in Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

, but it is yet to be formally described.

Description

Plants may grow up to 12 ft in height and the pseudostem may be up to half the height with a swollen base of up to 8 ft in circumference at the base. The leaves are bright green in colour on both sides with a deeply grooved and short petiole. The leaf sheaths are persistent at the base and leave closely set scars on the corm
Corm
A corm is a short, vertical, swollen underground plant stem that serves as a storage organ used by some plants to survive winter or other adverse conditions such as summer drought and heat ....

. The fruits are about 3 inches long and more or less triangular with dark brown seeds. The upper parts of the plant die out during the dry season leaving the corm, which forms new leaves at the beginning of the monsoon.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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