taro

plant
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Also known as: Colocasia esculenta, dasheen, eddo, elephant’s ear
Also called:
eddo or dasheen

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taro, (Colocasia esculenta), herbaceous plant of the arum family (Araceae) and its edible rootlike corm. Taro is probably native to southeastern Asia, whence it spread to Pacific islands and became a staple crop. It is cultivated for its large, starchy, spherical corms (underground stems), commonly known as “taro root,” which are consumed as a cooked vegetable, made into puddings and breads, and also made into the Polynesian poi, a thin, pasty, highly digestible mass of fresh or fermented taro starch. The large leaves of the taro are commonly stewed.

Taro is cultivated in rich well-drained soil. The corms are harvested seven months after planting. Taro leaves and corms are poisonous if eaten raw; the acrid calcium oxalate they contain must first be destroyed by heating.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Melissa Petruzzello.