Colocasia esculenta - Elephant's ear

Elephant’s ear (Colocasia esculenta), also called taro, is an evergreen perennial herb grown from a corm, probably native to tropical Asia and widely cultivated across the tropics.¹ Its starchy corm is cooked like a potato and its young leaves and stems are cooked as a vegetable; all parts contain calcium oxalate crystals and must be thoroughly cooked, as they are toxic raw.¹ It grows up to 1 m tall and about 1 m wide.¹

Inputs

• Full sun¹
• Semi-shade¹
• Moist soil¹
• Wet soil¹

Outputs

• Human food¹
• Medicinal use¹
• Fibre¹
• Fodder¹

Type

• Herb
• Evergreen
• Perennial

Dimension	At maturity
Height (m)	up to 1
Diameter (m)	about 1

Footnotes

1. Colocasia esculenta | Plants for a Future ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹