Plantain

**Siting:** Plantain wants full sun with part shade in the hottest part of the day, organically rich, medium-moisture, well-drained soil, and a spot sheltered from wind that can shred its large leaves. It is not winter hardy, so outdoor plantings in cold regions must be dug and moved indoors before the first frost, or the crop is grown instead in a greenhouse or large container.

**Watering and feeding:** Soil should be kept consistently moist but not waterlogged, and the plant is fertilized regularly through the growing season as a heavy feeder. Container specimens brought indoors for winter are given reduced water and fertilizer, or cut back to 6-8 inches and stored in a cool, dark, frost-free spot until the following season.

**Propagation:** New plants are raised by dividing the suckers, or pups, that form at the base of the parent; once a sucker reaches roughly 30-60 cm it is separated with some roots attached and replanted immediately. Because each pseudostem dies back after it fruits, ongoing production depends on these suckers replacing it, and routine pruning removes dead leaves along with any suckers not being kept for propagation.

Outdoors the plant is largely trouble-free, but under greenhouse conditions it can attract aphids, mealybugs, moths, scale, thrips, fruit flies, and spider mites. It is also susceptible to anthracnose, a fungal wilt, and mosaic virus.

Fruit is cut at whichever ripeness stage suits its use: green for savory cooking, yellow as it begins to sweeten, or black at its sweetest. Because plantain does not have a fixed growing season, bunches of roughly five to ten fruits can be harvested year-round, and an individual plant can go on producing for many years even as each pseudostem dies after fruiting and is replaced by a sucker.

**Culinary:** Plantain is a tropical staple food, treated much like a potato and cooked rather than eaten raw when unripe, whether steamed, boiled, fried, grilled, or baked; ripe fruit is used similarly as it sweetens toward black. Its flowers are also used as an ingredient in curries, and in parts of Africa plantains and bananas together supply more than a quarter of food energy for tens of millions of people.

**Ornamental:** The plant's showy leaves, large purple-bracted flower clusters, and colorful hanging fruit make it a landscape accent or specimen planting, and its smaller cultivated forms are also grown as houseplants. In the garden it attracts pollinators and songbirds.

Plantain arose as a hybrid between the wild species Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana, with its region of origin placed in Malesia and Southeast Asia. It is considered one of humanity's oldest cultivated crops, and cultivation later spread through South Asia and into Africa, Central America, the Caribbean, and other tropical regions where it remains a staple today.