Large taro usually needs to be cooked for more than 20 minutes, and small taro for 15 minutes.

Taro, taro, is a plant of the genus Taro in the family Amanita.

Wet herb. Tubers usually ovate, often bearing numerous small bulbs, all rich in starch. Leaves 2 to 3 or more. Petiole longer than leaf blade, 20 to 90 cm long, green, leaf blade ovate, 20 to 50 cm long, apex mucronate or short acuminate, lateral veins 4 pairs, obliquely reaching the leaf margin, posterior lobes rounded, connate up to 1/2 to 1/3 of the length, the curved emargination is obtuse, 3 to 5 cm deep, the basal veins intersecting at an angle of 30 degrees, the outer lateral veins 2 to 3, the inner 1 to 2, not visible. Inflorescence stalk often solitary, shorter than petiole.

The spathe varies in length, usually about 20 centimeters: the tube is green, about 4 centimeters long, 2.2 centimeters thick, and long ovate; the limb is lanceolate or elliptic, about 17 centimeters long, spreading out to become boat-shaped, with the margins involute, and pale yellow to greenish white. Fleshy spikes ca. 10 cm, shorter than spathe; female inflorescences long paniculate, 3 to 3.5 cm long, 1.2 cm thick proximally; neuter inflorescences ca. 3 to 3.3 cm long, finely terete; male inflorescences terete, 4 to 4.5 cm long, 7 mm thick, cuspidate at tip; appendages subulate, ca. 1 cm long, less than 1 mm thick. Fl. February to April (Yunnan) to August to September (Qinling).

Growing environment

Taro is suitable for warm and humid climate, in the 13 to 15 ℃ to start sprouting, the growing period requires more than 20 ℃, the bulb in 27 to 30 ℃ when the development of good, and requires sufficient nutrients, water and day and night temperature difference and short sunshine. Soil to fertile, strong water retention of clay loam, pH 4 to 9, and pH 5.5 to 7 is the most suitable.

Distribution range

China's north and south for a long time to cultivate. Because taro likes high temperature and humidity, the more south the cultivation habit is more prevalent.

Growth habit

Taro in the right temperature conditions, seed taro rooting, leaf formation after the formation of new plants, plant base to form a new shortened stems, with the growth of the plant gradually expand to form a new bulb, called the mother taro (taro head), the mother taro has most of the stem nodes, each section has brown hairy leaf sheath remains. The mother taro every elongation of 1 section, the growth of 1 leaf. At the end of March to the end of October this period of time the cumulative temperature high and low, affecting the number of leaves grown in each year, the cumulative temperature high number of leaves, and vice versa, less, generally 15 to 20 pieces, an average of every 10 days or so to grow leaves 1 piece. In the mother taro lower axillary buds grow bulbs for the "child taro", the child taro and will grow "grandson taro". Taro root is fleshy fiber root, root system is developed and vigorous, root hairs are few. In the tropics, taro can often be drawn from the leafy inflorescences of yellow-green fleshy spikes, but in the local rarely flowering.

Main value

The tuber is edible: it can be used as a soup, and also can be used as a substitute for food or starch, and has been regarded as an important food subsidy or relief crop since ancient times. Leaf stalks can be peeled and boiled or dried for storage. The whole plant is commonly used as pig feed.