Common Names: Cooking Banana

Plantains are a hybrid of two species of banana (M. acuminata x M. balbisiana) and includes some excellent bananas. Plantains are nutritious but generally must be cooked. Some are edible raw when fully ripe. More important than the sweet banana to people living in the tropics, the fruit can be sliced and deep fried, roasted or boiled in their skins and eaten with sugar or salt or used as a substitute for flour. The plant can be grown in poorer soils and dryer conditions than the sweet banana. It is used as temporary shade for coffee plantations. Propagated by corms or suckers.