Banana

*Musa*

How to know it

Huge paddle shaped leaves on a smooth green trunk that is not woody at all. Cut it and you find layers, like an onion. Each plant fruits once, then dies, while offshoots at the base carry on.

What it does

The fruit is obvious. Less obvious is that the leaves are used as plates, wrappers and cooking parcels across the region, the flower is eaten as a vegetable, and the fibre is used for rope and cloth. Very little of the plant is wasted.

Safety

Entirely safe. Cutting a stem needs an adult and a sharp knife.

Two things to do with children

Cut a section of stem across and let children peel the layers apart. Finding out that a banana trunk is rolled leaves rather than wood changes what they think a tree is.

Serve a snack on a banana leaf. Then talk about what happens to the plate afterwards, which is the shortest route into a real conversation about packaging.

Worth knowing

One plant, one bunch, then it dies and its offspring take over. That life story is unusual enough to be worth telling on its own.