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.
Tacca leontopetaloides
Also called Batflower, Fiji arrowroot, Masoa, Taka, Arrowroot, East Indian Arrowroot, Tahiti Arrowroot
In Singapore: Indian Arrow Root, Tahiti Arrowroot, Lukeh, Likir, Lukih, Condang, Kacunda, Kecondong, 蒟蒻薯 (Native to Singapore, Critically Endangered)
Tacca leontopetaloides is a tuberous tropical plant in the yam family, grown mainly for its starchy tubers, and its common names include Polynesian arrowroot and batflower. Its key to growing it is warm, wet conditions with a dormant rest period each year, when the leaves die back.
Tacca leontopetaloides is a species of flowering plant in the yam family Dioscoreaceae. It is native to the islands of Southeast Asia. Austronesian peoples introduced it as a canoe plant throughout the Indo-Pacific tropics during prehistoric times. It has become naturalized to tropical Africa, South Asia, northern Australia, and Oceania. Common names include Polynesian arrowroot, Fiji arrowroot, East Indies arrowroot, pia, and seashore bat lily.
Polynesian arrowroot is an ancient Austronesian root crop closely related to yams. It is originally native to Island Southeast Asia. It was introduced throughout the entire range of the Austronesian expansion during prehistoric times (c. 5,000 BP), including Micronesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar. Polynesian arrowroot have been identified as among the cultivated crops in Lapita sites in Palau, dating back to 3,000 to 2,000 BP. It was also introduced to Sri Lanka, southern India, and possibly also Australia through trade and contact.
Polynesian arrowroot was a minor staple among Austronesians. The roots are bitter if not prepared properly, thus it was only cultivated as a secondary crop to staples like Dioscorea alata and Colocasia esculenta. Its importance increased for settlers in the Pacific Islands, where food plants were scarcer, and it was introduced to virtually all the inhabited islands. They were valued for their ability to grow in low islands and atolls, and were often the staple crops in islands with these conditions.
The tubers of Polynesian arrowroot contain starch, making it an important food source for many Pacific Island cultures, primarily for the inhabitants of low islands and atolls. Polynesian arrowroot was prepared into a flour to make a variety of puddings. The tubers are first grated and then allowed to soak in fresh water. The settled starch is rinsed repeatedly to remove the bitter taste from taccalin, a kind of poisonous substance, and then dried. The flour was mixed with mashed taro, breadfruit, or pandan fruit extract and mixed with coconut cream to prepare puddings. In Hawaii, a local favorite is haupia, which was originally made with pia flour, coconut cream and kō (cane sugar). Today, Polynesian arrowroot has been largely replaced by cornstarch.
Tacca ampliplacenta · Tacca ankaranensis · Black bat flower · Batplant · Tacca palmata · Arrowroot
[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Tacca leontopetaloides 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.
