The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Leucocasia gigantea
Also called Indian taro
Leucocasia gigantea is the sole species in its genus, a 1.5–3 m aroid grown for its large leaves and starchy corm. It needs warm, wet conditions and rich, moist soil.
Leucocasia gigantea, also called the giant elephant ear or Indian taro, is a species of flowering plant. It is a 1.5–3 m (4 ft 11 in – 9 ft 10 in) tall aroid plant with a large, fibrous corm, producing at its apex a whorl of thick, green leaves. It is the sole species in genus Leucocasia.
Leucocasia gigantea is a "sister species" to another widely-cultivated 'taro', Colocasia esculenta, as well as to the alocasias, such as the large Alocasia macrorrhizos; it is speculated that L. gigantea was created as a result of natural hybridization between A. macrorrhizos and C. esculenta. It is called 'dọc mùng' in northern Vietnam and 'môn bạc hà' or 'bạc hà' in some provinces in southern Vietnam.
In Japanese, it is commonly called ハス芋 (hasu-imo), or "lotus yam". It is known as ryukyu in Kōchi Prefecture, as it is found in the Ryukyu Kingdom.
In addition to its value as a starchy root vegetable—known by many names, such as taro, or arbi (in Hindi)—the plant’s leaf stalk (petiole) is also used as a vegetable in some areas of Southeastern Asia and Japan. It is sometimes used as an ingredient in miso soup, chanpurū and sushi.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Leucocasia gigantea by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
