From North Africa, it went to the Canary Islands. And the plant came to the Americas with the slave trade. But it was not introduced to Florida until 1910; an experiment to find an alternative crop for potatoes in the warm parts of the U.S.

Taro grows from a corm, a shortened stem which serves as storage for sugars and starches. The leaves are carried on tall petioles that arise directly from the corm. The leaves are large, sagittate (arrowhead-shaped) and peltate, that is, the petiole is attached to the back of the leaf blade. This is the best way to differentiate taro from aroids like Caladium or elephant’s ear (Xanthosoma).

Something odd happened between the time that taro left eastward with the Polynesians and westward with the Arab traders. The Polynesian taros have 28 chromosomes; other varieties out of India have 42.

Taro never did become a major food crop in the U.S., but it did become a problem plant in southern wetlands. The plant out-competes native wetland species and, hence, reduces the plants needed to sustain birds and other wildlife.

Cultivars like ‘Black Magic’, ‘Violet Stem’ and ‘Chicago Harlequin’ are purely decorative. They do best in wet to saturated soils. The photographed specimen was growing in a pot without drainage and about two inches of water over the soil.

 

(Compiled from: “Taro (Colocasia esculenta)”, Wilfred Lee, Ethnobotanical Leaflets, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 1999; “Wild Taro”, Weed Alert, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Invasive Plant Management, 2000; “Wayfinders: Polynesian History and Origin”, PBS; and “Indian Ocean: Cradle of Globalization, Andrew Watson”, Scholarly Voices, Carol A. Keller, 2002)