Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Cliff Banana

Ensete superbum

Also called Rock Banana

Cliff Banana
Photo: Myself (Renata3), CC BY 2.5

Cliff Banana (Ensete superbum) is a banana relative from South India that grows up to about 3.7 m tall from a swollen underground corm. It dies back to the corm in the dry season and regrows with the monsoon, so it suits warm, humid conditions with a seasonal dry spell.

Family
Musaceae (Banana family)
Grows as
Tree
Light
Part shade, Bright indirect
Water
Water generously during the growing season and monsoon, then reduce water while the top dies back in the dry season.
Soil
Rich, well-draining loam with plenty of organic matter.
Temperature
18–30 °C; protect below 10 °C
How easy
Moderate
Edible
Yes, some parts
Native range
S. India
Climate
wet tropical

About

Ensete superbum is a species of banana from India.

Where it grows

The plant is well-known from the Western Ghats, Anaimalai Hills, some other South Indian hills in Dindigul and other parts of the peninsular India. It has also been recorded from Jhadol and Ogna forest ranges in Rajasthan, North India. There are also reports of a similar species in Thailand, but it is yet to be formally described.

Other Ensete plants

Snow Banana · Abyssinian banana · Ethiopian Banana

[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Ensete superbum by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…