Coco yam

Coco Yam (Colocasia esculenta), also widely known as Taro, is a pantropical herbaceous plant in the family Araceae, cultivated as a food crop for more than 10,000 years and considered one of humanity's oldest cultivated plants. The species grows from large starchy corms and produces broad, sagittate leaves with distinctive water-repellent surfaces—an adaptation that has earned the plant its association with the lotus effect in traditional culture. Corms, cormels, and young leaves are all edible after thorough cooking, which is essential to neutralise the calcium oxalate crystals that cause intense irritation when raw. Originating in South and Southeast Asia, Colocasia esculenta has been dispersed across tropical Africa, the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, and the Americas through centuries of agricultural exchange and migration. It thrives in wet or waterlogged soils, being particularly associated with paddy cultivation, irrigation channels, and swampy ground, though drought-tolerant cultivars exist. The species is a dietary staple in Hawaii, where it is the basis of poi; in West Africa, where it is boiled or pounded; and across the Pacific Islands, where it sustains subsistence communities. Given its widespread cultivation and genetic diversity represented across thousands of landraces, IUCN has not formally evaluated its conservation status. The species is not considered at risk.