A green-fingered professor has grown a banana tree, “taller than a person”, in his Aberystwyth back garden.

Prof Robert Nash, who lives at Dan y Coed, first planted the banana tree in his garden in 2015 and, despite not protecting it “in any way”, it has now grown “taller than a person”.

“It has problems with any hard frost and very nearly died this year,” Prof Nash said.

“However, in town we rarely get hard frosts. I do not protect it in any way and so it has survived by itself – it shows Aberystwyth town has a remarkably warm winter temperature. Of course lack of sun and high winds is a problem in the winter but amazingly this banana has survived since 2015 with no special attention - ‘sub-tropical Aber!’”

Since leaving his post at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Prof Nash has kept a keen interest in tropical plants, founding a company, Phytoquest, at Aberystwyth University botanic garden with a focus on “finding new and safer cancer medicines” from UK plants and foods.

Prof Nash explained: “I used to work on tropical plants at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew to find new medicines and kept an interest in tropical plants and many grow quite well in Aberystwyth as it’s quite warm in the winter relative to inland.

“Since coming to Aberystwyth University, I switched to plants found in Wales and they have turned out to be a good source of new potential medicines. “Our main focus is finding new and safer cancer medicines and have some patented molecules under investigation.”