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Taro
Colocasia esculenta.
21.3045, -157.856
Field Notes
Description:
In Hawaii, taro or kalo is a traditional form of food sustenance and nutrition, known from ancient Hawaiian culture. The contemporary Hawaiian diet consists of many tuberous plants, particularly sweet potato and taro. Some of the uses for taro include poi, table taro, taro chips, and luau leaf. The ancient Hawaiians identified so strongly with taro that the Hawaiian term for family, `ohana, is derived from the word `oha, the shoot or sucker which grows from the taro corm. As young shoots grow from the corm, so people grow from their family.
Habitat:
These were found growing near a sacred Heiau in Honolulu however Taro is native to southeast Asia.[2] It is a perennial, tropical plant primarily grown as a root vegetable for its edible starchy corm, and as a leaf vegetable. It is a food staple in African, Oceanic and Asian cultures and is believed to have been one of the earliest cultivated plants.[3] Colocasia is thought to have originated in the Indo-Malayan region, perhaps in eastern India and Bangladesh, and spread eastward into Southeast Asia, eastern Asia, and the Pacific islands; westward to Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean; and then southward and westward from there into East Africa and West Africa, whence it spread to the Caribbean and Americas. It is known by many local names and often referred to as 'elephant ears' when grown as an ornamental plant.
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