One of the two insets, or ‘false banana’, plants at London’s Kew Gardens has produced its first blossom.
The specimen in the Temperate House will only bloom once before it expires, with a brief flowering period of a few weeks or months.
This plant’s leaves and underground stems feed 20% of Ethiopia’s population.
The inset fruit is a little, bloated banana with huge, black seeds that make it virtually inedible.
Enset plants are referred to as “wonder crops” due to their remarkable resistance to drought and disease.
Dr. James Borrell, the Research Leader in Trait Diversity and Function at Kew, stated, ‘It’s unfortunate that so few people have heard of inset from Ethiopia, as this genuinely remarkable plant is a vital source of nutrition for millions of subsistence farmers in the region.
‘Enset has a unique set of characteristics that distinguish it from other common crops. Most notably, it is a perennial that can be planted and harvested at any time.
Consequently, farmers can consider inset as a “green asset” to mitigate food shortages when other crops fail or are otherwise unavailable, similar to a food savings account.
The fact that Ethiopians frequently refer to inset as the “tree against hunger” is therefore not surprising.
Ensete ventricosum, an African banana cousin, can reach to 30 feet (10 metres).
The ‘pseudostem’, a false stem made of densely packed leaf sheaths, and the ‘corm’, a subterranean swelling stem, are edible.
