[5] A typical Madagascar banana tree is 5 to 6 meters high, with a trunk swollen at the base into a thick tuber 2.5 m in circumference.

The stem is surrounded by persistent leaf sheaths and thus takes on the appearance of a large trunk swollen at its base.

[2] A traditional Malagasy use of the banana in southwest Madagascar is to grind the stems to a powder as a treatment for stomach-ache.

[7] A specimen was collected in Betsiboka in 1905 by a French botanist named, Pierre Claverie, and is kept in a herbarium in the National Museum of Natural History, France.

[8] The Madagascar banana is named after a French botanist, Joseph Marie Henry Alfred Perrier de la Bâthie, and was originally classified in the genus Musa,[9] but was later reclassified as Ensete by Ernest Entwistle Cheesman.