Umbrarium

Nang Tani, Lady of Tani, is a female spirit of Thai folklore who lives in clumps of wild banana called kluai tani. She belongs to the nang mai, ladies of the wood, kin to tree-bound figures such as Nang Takian. Similar banana-tree ladies are told in Lao and Cambodian tradition. She is also called phi tani or phrai tani. The cultivated sweet banana of the house yard is not her tree; tani fruit is seedy and not eaten, so the clump stands at field edges and roadsides, close to people yet not inside the compound.

Folk description gives her a green traditional costume, greenish skin, red lips, and loose black hair. She stays hidden by day and may appear on full-moon nights, standing, feet hovering just above the soil. It is a bad omen to cut her clump. People leave sweets, incense, and flowers, and tie coloured satin or silk around the trunk. Oral legend says she may harm men who have wronged women, yet she is mostly remembered as gentle, even offering food to passing monks.

Thai popular culture loves her: the 1967 film Nang Phrai Tani, later movies, comics, and amulets. That affection can blur her into a generic beautiful ghost. She is not Mae Nak of Phra Khanong, and she is not the Malay pontianak, though both may be associated with banana growth. The pontianak is a childbirth revenant; Nang Tani is a tree tenant. Keeping those paths distinct is a matter of cultural care, not pedantry.

Read with care, she is temptation in the green at the village edge: isolation of a plant people will not plant by the house, and the courtesy of cloth on a trunk. The archive records offerings as they are practised. It does not invent a rite for compelling her. Isolation here is the roadside clump that everyone walks past and few will cut.