Ensete ventricosum is a large, fleshy-stemmed plant with a head of banana-like leaves. The plant grows between 6 and 12 m high. It is a monocotyledon and does not have a true, branched trunk, but an unbranched pseudostem formed by the imbricated (overlapping) bases of petioles (leaf stalks) left behind when old leaves die. The pseudostem broadens towards the base. The plant seldom forms suckers from the base. The simple, large leaves, up to 5 m long and nearly 0.9 m wide, are oblong to oval and have a thick, rose-pink midrib and numerous pinnately parallel nerves extending to the margin. They are spirally arranged at the tip of the bare trunk giving the plant a rounded crown.

This plant flowers and bears fruit once only in its lifetime and then dies. The flowers form a large, showy bunch or spike 2 to 3 m in length. The male flowers usually occur at the tip and the female or bisexual flowers lower down. The cream-coloured flowers have only one petal, but are surrounded by large, showy, maroon bracts. Flowering usually takes place in early summer (October and November) and the flower spike is on the tree for a year or so.

Insipid, banana-like fruits form about half way along the flower spike after flowering. They have a yellow skin with black spots and contain a row of pea-sized, hard, black seeds. Under normal conditions plants flower when they are about eight years old.