plantains

plural noun

a low-growing plant that typically has a rosette of leaves and a slender green flower spike, widely growing as a weed in lawns.

late Middle English: from Old French, from Latin plantago, plantagin-, from planta ‘sole of the foot’ (because of its broad prostrate leaves).

1. a banana containing high levels of starch and little sugar, which is harvested green and widely used as a cooked vegetable in the tropics.
2. the plant which bears the plantain.

mid 16th century: from Spanish plá(n)tano, probably by assimilation of a South American word to the Spanish plá(n)tano ‘plane tree’.