page_title: Taro
section_title: United States
hierarchical_section_title: Taro / Uses / Culinary / Americas / United States
caption_attribution_description: English: Taro stems for sale in Asian market in California, ChildofMidnight, please attribute
context_page_description: Colocasia esculenta is a tropical plant grown primarily for its edible corms, a root vegetable most commonly known as taro, or kalo in Hawaiian. It is the most widely cultivated species of several plants in the family Araceae which are used as vegetables for their corms, leaves, and petioles. Taro corms are a food staple in African, Oceanic and South Asian cultures, and taro is believed to have been one of the earliest cultivated plants.
context_section_description: In American Chinatowns, people often use taro in Chinese cuisine, though it is not as popular as in Asian and Pacific nations. Since the late 20th century, taro chips have been available in many supermarkets and natural food stores. In the 1920s, dasheen, as it was known, was highly touted by the Secretary of the Florida Department of Agriculture as a valuable crop for growth in muck fields. Fellsmere, Florida, near the east coast, was a farming area deemed perfect for growing dasheen. It was used in place of potatoes and dried to make flour. Dasheen flour was said to make excellent pancakes when mixed with wheat flour.
caption: Taro leaf-stems (petioless) for sale at a market in California, 2009
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