A Japanese man planted three banana trees in the median strip of a major road in Kurume City and watered them daily for two years before anyone noticed their existence.

A 50-something man from Kurume City, Fukuoka Prefecture, was recently ordered to remove three banana trees he had illegally planted and cared for in the median strip of a busy city road for a couple of years. It’s unclear why the man chose to plant the trees on public property, and in a median strip of all places, but they eventually got so big that they began affecting motorists’ field of view. It wasn’t difficult for authorities to identify the man responsible for the trees, as he had been watering the tropical plants at least twice a day for the last two years. He was ordered to remove the trees, or risk spending up to a year in jail or pay a fine of 500,000 yen ($3,350).

“It’s lonely… I feel lonely without my beautiful bananas,” the man told journalists after having to remove the three banana trees.

The Kurume banana trees had been getting nationwide attention for weeks, and on the day of their removal, news crews from major news channels were on location. They interviewed the man who had planted them and filmed him trying to eat one of the unripe bananas harvested from them. It was too green to be edible, but the man ate it anyway.

How the unnamed banana enthusiast managed to remain off the radar of the police for so long, especially with his daily watering ritual, remains a mystery,

Luckily, the banana trees have found new homes. Two of them wound up in the garden of an 80-year-old man who vowed to take good care of them, and ‘Kurume’s banana man’ gave the third one to a friend as a birthday present.