Taro

Colocasia esculenta

Araceae

The elephant-ear starch of the wet tropics — a cooked corm and a cooked green, and a mouthful of needles if you skip the heat.

Cooked corm and cooked leaf are food. Raw is an oxalate needle — itch, not a salad. This is not elephant-ear ornamental you cannot name.

Parts used: Corm, cooked · Leaf, cooked
Traditional notes: Staple starch · Cooked green · Traditional poi and stew
Grow · USDA 6b: Tropical perennial, USDA 8–11 with wet soil; a pot in a pond north, lifted before frost A named food corm, not a florist’s bulb unless you know it is esculenta. In work: Sep · Oct · Nov
Harvest: When leaves yellow in the cool season, or as needed. Cook the same day you peel if possible.

Wet feet on purpose.
If your tongue itches, it is not done. Back to the pot.

Safety

Raw corm or leaf An unnamed ornamental elephant-ear Oxalate stone formers who have been told to limit

Lore

Hawaiian kalo is a genealogy as much as a crop — the elder sibling of the people in the old stories. Poi is that corm, fermented. West Africa and the Caribbean took other aroids (malanga, dasheen) in the same pot-logic. The itch taught every kitchen the same rule without a lab: heat, or do not eat.

The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.