Take It From Taro
Last week I was watching a wonderful program that explores various plants from around the world, looking at their cultural, historic and current uses. This particular episode focused on a plant I thought I'd not heard of...Taro. It wasn't too far into the program when I realized what I was really looking at were Elephant Ears, or Colocasia esculenta. Now, this bit of knowledge took me aback, as here they were talking about the wonderful culinary delights as well as the medicinal uses of this plant, and all my life, I'd thought Elephant Ears, much like their cousin Dieffenbachia, were quite poisonous. If you've been suffering from the same semi-misconceptions, read on!
Historical Reference
Taro in Tradition and Legend
To delve into the rich history of Taro, we must travel to Hawaii, where this plant plays a role in the very first steps of humanity. Hawaiian legend tells that the Sky God, or Sky Father, Wakea or Kane, became involved with his daughter born of Papa, a Goddess associated with the Earth, and this resulted in two offspring. The first was Haloa naka, who was stillborn. They buried him, and out of his body grew the Taro or Kalo plant. The second child was Haloa, the first ancestor of man. As the first born held the rights of priority, the Taro plant actually held a status higher than man. As the hiapo, or first born sibling, Taro was also said to be the body form of Kane, the progenitor. The Hawaiians considered the plant as akin to the God, and believed they ingested a part of his power when they ate the po'i. For many hundreds of years, the serving of po'i was held in such high esteem as a sacred part of daily life, that whenever a bowl of po'i was served, it was believed that the spirit of the ancestor Haloa was present, and in honor all conflict or argument among family members and those at the table would end abruptly.
There are many who still believe that Taro (Kalo) contains the greatest life force of any food. is believed to have the greatest life force of all foods. By eating po'i one at a time, in ritual fashion, a ceremony of life is celebrated which strengthens the bonds of family, both in the present and as an honoring of the ancestors.
Taro in History and Culture
We know that Taro has been in the Hawaiian culture for at least 2000 years, as the writings of the Chinese of that time period mention its cultivation. It is believed that Taro was one of the plants the first Polynesian settlers brought to the Hawaiian Islands around 400 A.D. The vast spread of Taro can be seen in archeological evidence indicated by the land areas that formed pondlike fields, or lo'i, dating from at least the fifteenth century A.D. Some of these were still standing by the 1920's in nearly every valley on the large islands. Many had been given over to sugar cane since the mid to late 1800's, but much of the original walls had remained. The earlier evidence, however, showed that the massive amounts of land devoted purely to Taro pointed to a culture that was possibly dependent on its cultivation and consumption.
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