Edible style

My garden is full of aroids. They include the philodendrons, arum lilies and amorphophallus with their purple-black, dead animal-smelling flowers.

Most aroids are toxic to some degree but despite this, many are important food plants in the tropics and subtropics, especially the taro clan. The common edible taro in Pacific and Asian countries are cultivars of Colocasia esculenta although most

Colocasia species are edible if cooked properly to remove the ghastly prickly calcium oxalate crystals.

But I love the genus Xanthosoma which is the South American branch of the taro tribe and these have been a major component of traditional diets there for thousands of years. Of the 50-odd species, the largest is white malanga or malanga blanca ( Xanthosoma sagittifolium). It has been a major food crop for centuries throughout the tropical Americas, and more recently, in the Philippines and West Africa where it was introduced in the sixteenth century.

It is a very big, fast-growing plant with huge grey-green, arrowhead-shaped leaves. It reaches 2m high here and quickly forms a large tuberous corm with elongated horizontal hairy tubers growing from the central corm throughout the growing season. The white, starchy flesh has a crisp, waxy texture with a nutty, earthy flavour and it is either ground up as flour, or grated or sliced then fried, stewed or grilled.

Not surprisingly, it is one of Latin America’s most important staple foods and was an important part of the diet of the Inca civilisation.

Malanga flour is nowadays a popular hypoallergenic flour substitute and is commercially available in US supermarkets. The huge immigrant Latin population in the US is supporting large scale commercial production of fresh malanga in Florida and the Gulf States.

The huge quilted leaves make this a very dramatic landscape plant in my garden. It is too visually important to warrant demolishing for food, although the young, unfurling leaves make a very nice spinachlike stew or soup with chili, called callaloo in the Caribbean where it is a popular dish.

Just as popular in Latin America is the yautia nigra, black malanga or blue tannia.

It is also commonly known as violet taro ( Xanthosoma

violaceum) and is used in the same ways as white malanga.

It is about a metre high. The stems and undersides of the leaves are purple-blue and the flesh is pinkish, turning blue-ish when cooked.

Both yautia nigra and white malanga grow well here in northern New Zealand, and are a dramatic sight in a warm garden like this one with their enormous quilted leaves. The young leaves are harvested as they unfurl and are used as food in the same ways as Asian and Pacific taro.

They contain the same calcium oxalate crystals as other taro but the lower concentrations make it easier to get rid of the prickliness. Boiled and mashed, and served like mashed potatoes, it is a favourite food throughout the tropical Americas. Like the edible Pacific taro, Colocasia

esculenta, these malanga species will be cut back by light frost. Fortunately, the corms will survive though, and regrow in spring.

Unlike the Pacific taro, the Xanthosoma are relatively quick to cook.

In the garden, they need good shelter from wind and will tolerate dappled shade as well as full sun. Xanthosoma mafaffa is another very large American taro which can reach 2.5m in a sheltered spot. However, it is more tender to cold or windy conditions. Maffafa is completely deciduous in this garden and is always the first to be damaged by wind. The smallest of our xanthosomas here is Xanthosoma atrovirens. It is a deciduous clumper about 60cm high with a mass of small tubers at the end of summer. These are sweeter and softer than the others, and have yellowish flesh.

It is a popular home garden crop in the West Indies where it is known as yautia amarilla.

The attractive leaves are a smoky grey-green and quite sturdy. It reliably pops up every spring among the other ornamentals planted too close because I always forget it‘s there.

The hardiest Xanthosoma make a dramatic impact in sheltered northern gardens, recovering quickly from winter damage and if the clump gets too big they can be harvested for the table. What‘s not to like!