A Dartmouth couple have miraculously grown their own bananas - beating the near-impossible odds of harvesting them in the UK.

Husband and wife Ken and Christine Weemes have two trees bursting with bananas at their property in Ford Valley.

Christine was shocked to see the fruit developing: "I was so surprised when I saw the bananas coming out.

"I looked at and I thought ’What’s that funny thing?’ It looked like a coconut, and then I saw this one come in. They just exploded out.

"I did some research and found it’s very rare for banana plants to fruit in the UK."

Ken said: "We understood that you could grow the plants, but you would never get bananas in this county. It’s amazing."

Intrigued, Christine researched whether they were alone.

Of the other rare cases she found, most were grown inside conservatories or greenhouses.

The couple, who moved to Dartmouth three years ago, think the trees have been growing for about five years.

Over winter they had to take special care of them, wrapping the trunks in a special gardening fleece to protect them from frost.

Ken later installed an irrigation system to ensure they are watered every hour.

Both say they’re ready to make lots of banana cake: "Whether they’ll be edible or not I don’t know.

"They might be too bitter. We’ll see, you never know. It’ll be incredible."

However, they may find themselves disappointed.

Professor Mick Fuller, a lecturer at the University of Plymouth, claims the fruits are "inedible".

While he says he’s no banana expert, Ken and Christine’s plants are "likely" to be the Japanese Musa basjoo variety of the potassium-rich fruit.

He said that the hardy nature of the species, which originated in China, means it’s possible to grow in the UK.

Professor Fuller also said that the combination of early flowering and the warmer weather might have helped the bananas to appear.

The fruits of their labour are not lost, as there are other environmental benefits to the exotic plants.

Ken said they’d discovered they could use the leaves to hold food with.

Christine said: "Next time we chop a leaf off, we’ll use it as a plate".