Musa x paradisiaca

Botanical Name: Musa x paradisiaca L.

Family:  Musaceae

Common Name: Vazha

English Name: Banana, kodali, plantain,

Description: a large, perennial plant growing around 8 metres tall.  Looking somewhat like a tree, it is a herbaceous plant whose top growth dies after flowering, to be replaced by new growth from the rootstock. Leaves simple large with a thick midnerve and pinnately paraled herve. Inflorescence terminal spicate bracts spathaceous large flowers bisexual sepals and petals connate. Lip free transparent stamens 5 tertile with a sterile staminode ovary inferiory 3-celled ovules many axile style filiform with a lobulate stigma fruit fleshy oblong. Bananas are a staple food and one of the most prolific of all food cropsStout herbs, root stock large stem formed by the imbricate base of petioles.

Flowering & Fruiting: Throughout the year

Distribution: Cultivated throughout the tropics.

IUCN: No

District: All District of Tamil Nadu

Uses: Dessert forms are sweet and succulent when fully ripe. Male inflorescences are eaten in curries or cooked with coconut milk, The inner stem can be boiled and eaten, or can be dried and made into a flour and starch, Blanched shoots that sprout from the base can be roasted and eaten. The unripe fruits and their sap are astringent and haemostatic. They are eaten, often roasted, as a treatment for diarrhea. The fruit is used to treat epilepsy. The peeled and sliced fruit is placed on the forehead to relieve the heat of a headache.

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