Taro in the context of Dioscorea alata

Colocasia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Araceae, native to Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Some species are widely cultivated and naturalized in other tropical and subtropical regions. The species C. esculenta (taro) is invasive in wetlands along the Gulf Coast of the United States, where it threatens to displace native wetland plants.

The names elephant ear and cocoyam are also used for some other large-leaved genera in the Araceae, notably Xanthosoma and Caladium.

A staple food, food staple, or simply staple, is a food that is eaten often and in such quantities that it constitutes a dominant portion of a standard diet for an individual or a population group, supplying a large fraction of energy needs and generally forming a significant proportion of the intake of other nutrients as well. For humans, a staple food of a specific society may be eaten as often as every day or every meal, and most people live on a diet based on just a small variety of food staples. Specific staples vary from place to place, but typically are inexpensive or readily available foods that supply one or more of the macronutrients and micronutrients needed for survival and health: carbohydrates, proteins, fats, minerals and vitamins. Typical examples include grains (cereals and legumes), seeds, nuts and root vegetables (tubers and roots). Among them, cereals (rice, wheat, oat, maize, etc.), legumes (lentils and beans) and tubers (e.g. potato, taro and yam) account for about 90% of the world's food calorie intake.

Early agricultural civilizations valued the crop foods that they established as staples because, in addition to providing necessary nutrition, they generally are suitable for storage over long periods of time without decay. Such nonperishable foods are the only possible staples during seasons of shortage, such as dry seasons or cold temperate winters, against which times harvests have been stored. During seasons of surplus, wider choices of foods may be available.

A paddy field (or paddy) is a flooded field of arable land used for growing semiaquatic crops, most notably rice and taro. It originates from the Neolithic rice-farming cultures of the Yangtze River basin in southern China, associated with pre-Austronesian and Hmong-Mien cultures. It was spread in prehistoric times by the expansion of Austronesian peoples to Island Southeast Asia, Madagascar, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. The technology was acquired by other cultures in mainland Asia for rice farming, spreading to East Asia, Mainland Southeast Asia, and South Asia.

Fields can be built into steep hillsides as terraces or adjacent to depressed or steeply sloped features such as rivers or marshes. They require a great deal of labor and materials to create and need large quantities of water for irrigation. Oxen and water buffalo, adapted for life in wetlands, are important working animals used extensively in paddy field farming.

The lotus effect refers to self-cleaning properties that are a result of ultrahydrophobicity as exhibited by the leaves of Nelumbo, the lotus flower. Dirt particles are picked up by water droplets due to the micro- and nanoscopic architecture on the surface, which minimizes the droplet's adhesion to that surface. Ultrahydrophobicity and self-cleaning properties are also found in other plants, such as Tropaeolum (nasturtium), Opuntia (prickly pear), Alchemilla, cane, and also on the wings of certain insects.

The phenomenon of ultrahydrophobicity was first studied by Dettre and Johnson in 1964 using rough hydrophobic surfaces. Their work developed a theoretical model based on experiments with glass beads coated with paraffin or PTFE telomer. The self-cleaning property of ultrahydrophobic micro-nanostructured surfaces was studied by Wilhelm Barthlott and Ehler in 1977, who described such self-cleaning and ultrahydrophobic properties for the first time as the "lotus effect"; perfluoroalkyl and perfluoropolyether ultrahydrophobic materials were developed by Brown in 1986 for handling chemical and biological fluids. Other biotechnical applications have emerged since the 1990s.

Cocoyam is a common name for more than one tropical root crop and vegetable crop belonging to the Arum family (also known as Aroids and by the family name Araceae) and may refer to:

• Taro (Colocasia esculenta) – old cocoyam
• Malanga (Xanthosoma spp.) – new cocoyam

Cocoyams are herbaceous perennial plants belonging to the family Araceae and are grown primarily for their edible roots, although all parts of the plant are edible. Cocoyams that are cultivated as food crops belong to either the genus Colocasia or the genus Xanthosoma and are generally composed of a large spherical corm (swollen underground storage stem), from which a few large leaves emerge.

Xanthosoma is a genus of flowering plants in the arum family, Araceae. The genus is native to tropical America but widely cultivated and naturalized in other tropical regions. Several are grown for their starchy corms, an important food staple of tropical regions, known variously as malanga, otoy, otoe, cocoyam (or new cocoyam), tannia, tannier, yautía, macabo, ocumo, macal, taioba, dasheen, quequisque, ʻape and (in Papua New Guinea) as Singapore taro (taro kongkong). Many other species, including especially Xanthosoma roseum, are used as ornamental plants; in popular horticultural literature these species may be known as ‘ape due to resemblance to the true Polynesian ʻape, Alocasia macrorrhizos, or as elephant ear from visual resemblance of the leaf to an elephant's ear. Sometimes the latter name is also applied to members in the closely related genera Caladium, Colocasia (taro), and Alocasia.

The leaves of most Xanthosoma species are 40–200 centimetres (16–79 inches) long, sagittate (arrowhead-shaped) or subdivided into three or as many as 18 segments. Unlike the leaves of Colocasia, those of Xanthosoma are usually not peltate- the upper v-notch extends into the point of attachment of the leaf petiole to the blade.

Corm, bulbo-tuber, or bulbotuber is a short, vertical, swollen, underground plant stem that serves as a storage organ that some plants use to survive winter or other adverse conditions such as summer drought and heat (perennation).

The word cormous usually means plants that grow from corms, parallel to the terms tuberous and bulbous to describe plants growing from tubers and bulbs.

The Alismatales (alismatids) are an order of flowering plants including about 4,500 species. Plants assigned to this order are mostly tropical or aquatic. Some grow in fresh water, some in marine habitats. Perhaps the most important food crop in the order is the taro plant, Colocasia esculenta.

The cuisine of Hawaii incorporates five distinct styles of food, reflecting the diverse food history of settlement and immigration in the Hawaiian Islands, primarily originating from Polynesian, North American and East Asian cuisines.

In the pre-contact period of Ancient Hawaii (300 AD–1778), Polynesian voyagers brought plants and animals to the Islands. As Native Hawaiians settled the area, they fished, raised taro for poi, planted coconuts, sugarcane, sweet potatoes and yams, and cooked meat and fish in earth ovens.

The cuisines of Oceania include those found on Australia, New Zealand, and New Guinea, and also cuisines from many other islands or island groups throughout Oceania.

Since the region of Oceania consists of islands, seafood is a prominent part of the diet, with vegetables such as potatoes, sweet potato, taro and yams being the main starch. Coconut, and its derivative products such as coconut milk, coconut oil and coconut sugar, are important ingredients in the tropics of Oceania.