Musaceae

Giant herbs built from a pseudostem of tightly overlapping leaf-base sheaths rather than true woody stem tissue; a large pendulous flower spike opens beneath waxy, often purple-red bracts, each sheltering a row of flowers that ripen into a cluster of fruit.

The 'trunk' is not wood at all — it is entirely made of rolled, overlapping leaf bases, and the whole pseudostem dies back to the underground rhizome after fruiting just once.

To check whether a plant belongs to Musaceae, compare the leaf arrangement, leaf type, flower symmetry, fruit type, and one distinctive marker together. A single feature can mislead; the family pattern is the combination.