Colocasia esculenta
Taro is a large, fast-growing aroid with heart-shaped leaves, grown from a starchy corm. It is native from India and the eastern Himalaya to southern China and western Malesia, and has been cultivated as a staple crop for thousands of years. It is a plant of warm, wet lowland ground, such as swamps, stream edges and paddy margins, so it needs heat, lots of water, rich soil and strong light. In cool winters it dies back to the corm.
Where it grows wild
Wild and naturalised taro grows in lowland wetlands, marshes, stream and river banks and wet ditches, often in standing or slowly moving water, in full sun to part shade. It is also grown in both flooded paddies and rain-fed upland fields.
Mostly lowland. The GBIF records range from below sea level to about 2029 m, with a median of 68 m.
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Profiles are drafts built from measured range and climate and from published sources; each section carries its own confidence in the app. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, used under its CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, unmodified.