Food for thought

ANEW Kew study on ‘wondercrop’ enset has inspired one of five outdoor art installations that will premiere at Kew Wakehurst, West Sussex, this summer. The Ethiopian staple crop, also known as false banana, could potentially feed 100 million people in a warming world, finds the study. Some 20 million Ethiopians already rely on it, using the starchy stems and roots to make porridge and bread (the fruit itself is inedible), but its appeal has not spread beyond the country’s boundaries. Given that almost half of all the calories we consume come from rice, wheat and maize, ‘we need to diversify the plants we use globally as a species’, otherwise ‘all our eggs are in a very small basket,’ explains Kew’s Dr James Borrell. Enset has ‘some really unusual traits that make it unique as a crop. You plant it at any time, you harvest it at any time and it’s perennial. That’s why they call it the tree against hunger’.

Taking its cue from traditional Ethiopian huts, The False Banana Pavilion (right) by Flea Folly Architects will stand in Wakehurst’s Bethlehem Wood and be lined with giant, paddle-shaped enset leaves that have the names and locations of each landrace carved across them. Other installations featured in ‘Nourish’—each of which is inspired by one of Kew’s world-leading science projects—include a 24ft-tall sculpture formed of 4,000 individual resin pieces designed to capture and slowly release rainfall and inspired by the Columbian perennial frailejón. ‘Nourish’ runs from July 8 to September 18 (www.kew. org/nourish).