[8] In its wild form, it is native to the eastern edge of the Great African Plateau, extending northwards from South Africa through Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to Ethiopia, and west to the Congo, being found in high-rainfall forests on mountains, and along forested ravines and streams.

[5] Like bananas, Ensete ventricosum is a large non-woody plant—a gigantic monocarpic evergreen perennial (not a tree)[9]—up to 6 m (20 ft) tall.

The roots are an important foodstuff, but the fruits are inedible (insipid, flavorless)[12] and have hard, black, rounded seeds.

It is estimated that 40 to 60 enset plants occupying 250–375 square metres (2,700–4,000 sq ft) can provide enough food for a family of 5 to 6 people.

[16] Each plant takes four to five years to mature, at which time a single root will yield about 40 kg (88 lb) of food.

In 1994 3,000 km2 (1,200 sq mi) of enset were grown in Ethiopia, with a harvest estimated to be almost 10 tonnes per hectare (4.0 long ton/acre; 4.5 short ton/acre).

[17] The young and tender tissues in the centre or heart of the plant (the growing point) are cooked and eaten, being tasty and nutritious and very like the core of palms and cycads.

In Ethiopia, more than 150,000 hectares (370,000 acres; 580 sq mi) are cultivated for the starchy staple food prepared from the pulverised trunk and inflorescence stalk.

Bulla is made from the liquid squeezed out of the mixture and sometimes eaten as a porridge, while the remaining solids are suitable for consumption after a settling period of some days.

Kocho is in places regarded as a delicacy, suitable for serving at feasts and ceremonies such as weddings, when wheat flour is added.

[18] However its value as a famine food has fallen for a number of reasons, as detailed in the April 2003 issue of the UN-OCHA Ethiopia unit's Focus on Ethiopia: Apart from an enset plant disease epidemic in 1984–85 which wiped out large parts of the plantations and created the green famine, in the past 10 years major factors were recurrent drought and food shortage together with acute land shortage that forced farmers more and more into consumption of immature plants.

[9] It has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit,[20][21] as has the cultivar 'Maurelii' (Ethiopian black banana)[22] A good quality fibre, suitable for ropes, twine, baskets, and general weaving, is obtained from the leaves.

[23][24] Fresh leaves are a common fodder for cattle during the dry season,[24] and many farmers feed their animals with residues of enset harvest or processing.

[24] In 1769, the celebrated Scottish traveller James Bruce first sent a description and quite accurate drawings of a plant common in the marshes around Gondar in Ethiopia, confidently pronounced it to be "no species of Musa" and wrote that its local name was "ensete".

[28] Second, mealybugs-ant symbiotic relationships can be linked to enset infestation and protect and even transport the mealybug over short distances.

[32][30] The most well known of them is the infection by the bacteria Xanthomonas campestris pathovar Musacerum which creates bacterial wilt, also known as borijje and wol'a by the Kore people.

Other diseases have been observed such as Okka and Woqa which occur respectively in case of severe drought and in situations of too much water in the soil which causes the proliferation of bacteria.

[43][29] The plant is very important for food security because it is quite resistant to droughts (the growth only stops for a short time) and it can be harvested at any development stage.

[43] Over centuries, the different ethnic groups have applied their specific indigenous knowledge of farming systems in order to sustain production in various ways.

A dying out of enset varieties would hence also make disappear a part of cultural practices and linguistic terms in Ethiopia (Negash et al., 2004).

Richer farmers can generally afford to maintain a higher level of farm biodiversity because they have more resources such as land, labour and livestock.

[47] Sir John Kirk felt that in habit Ensete livingstonianum was indistinguishable from E. ventricosum and noted that both are found in the mountains of equatorial Africa.