Plantains

Plantains (Musa* paradisiaca) are in the same highly ramified species as dessert bananas (M. acuminata). But plantains are starchier and need to be cooked, either when they are green outside and hard inside or when their skins have turned yellow and black, and their flesh is soft and sweetish. Their origin is Asian, but they came to the tropical New World via Africa, after half a millennium of naturalization there. Indo-Malaysian colonists brought them to Madagascar around 1000 and they spread westward.