Interesting Plant: Colocasia Esculenta

Another striking plant for your garden. Colocasia comes in a wide variety of shapes and colors, so you can probably find one that will fit into your garden. I especially like the dark/black varieties. 

Colocasia esculenta

Discovered via Tumblr User, flowersgardenlove

Colocasia esculenta is a tropical plant grown primarily for its edible corms, the root vegetables whose many names include Taro and Eddoe

Rhizomes of different shapes and sizes. Leaves up to 40×24.8 cm, sprouts from rhizome, dark green above and light green beneath, triangular-ovate, sub-rounded and mucronate at apex, tip of the basal lobes rounded or sub-rounded. Petiole 0.8 -1.2 m high. Spathe up to 25 cm long. Spadix about 3/5 as long as the spathe, flowering parts up to 8 mm in diameter. Female portion at the fertile ovaries intermixed with sterile white ones. Neuters above the females, rhomboid or irregular oblong. Male portion above the neuter. Synandrium lobed, cells 6 or 8. Appendage shorter than the male portion. 

Taro was probably first native to the lowland wetlands of Malaysia (taloes). Estimates are that taro was in cultivation in wet tropical India before 5000 BC, presumably coming from Malaysia, and from India further transported westward to ancient Egypt, where it was described by Greek and Roman historians as an important crop. In India, it is known as “arbi” or “arvi”. In Indonesia, it is called talasor keladi.

— Wikipedia.org 

More information on Stenocarpus sinuatus:

From Amazon.com:
 
  
 
Plants and seeds from Amazon.com:
 
 

Previously in the Interesting Plant series: 

Interesting Plant is a series from A Gardener’s Notebook blog and podcast that highlights the most interesting plants I find in my Internet and real-world travels — Douglas