Araceae family(Colocasia esculenta)
Araceae family
Taro is a tropical starch crop, especially important in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, where it was first domesticated. It is the source of the traditional Hawaiian staple poi. The edible portion of the plant is actually a corm, an enlarged, underground modified stem. The arum family to which it belongs contains a number of edible plants of the Old and New World. Taro is vegetatively propagated and was first domesticated sometime between 2,000 and 5,000 B.C. Its chromosome number is either 2n=2x=26 or 2n=3x=42.