Ensete ventricosum 'Maurelii'

Red Ensete in the morning sunshine
Originally uploaded by emagen

This is the red form of the Abyssinian banana, Ensete ventricosum. The colour of the leaf is fantastic and can grow very large. 'Maurelli' is not as hardy as the basic green form and cannot be grown from seed. But never fear, you can now buy young plants in places like B&Q and Homebase in the UK, they should be available any time soon. I find it best to grow the plant in a pot for the first year then attempt to overwinter it somewhere frost free. In the second year I plant it out and it will produce a massive plant but, I find, it is then too big to dig up for the winter and it will die.
This year my timings are all wrong and I don't have any plants for planting out, so I'm waiting for them to become available again.
This year has been a bad year for bananas for me, largely due to my laziness and bad planning!
This photograph was taken the summer before last, this plant was standing about 10 ft tall and there is even my shadow on one of the leaves.