Giant elephant ear facts for kids

"Bac ha" redirects here. For the north Vietnamese district, see Bắc Hà District.

Quick facts for kids Giant elephant ear

Scientific classification
Genus:	Colocasia
Species:	gigantea

Colocasia gigantea, also called giant elephant ear or Indian taro, is a 1.5–3 m tall herb with a large, fibrous corm, producing at its apex a whorl of large leaves. The leaf stalk is used as a vegetable in some areas in South East Asia and Japan.

Known as dọc mùng in Vietnam (bạc hà in some provinces in southern Vietnam), it is often used in canh chua and bún.

In Japanese, it is called hasu-imo (literally, "lotus yam") in general and ryukyu in Kōchi Prefecture as it is originated in Ryukyu Kingdom. It is sometimes used as an ingredient of miso soup, chanpurū and sushi. A Japanese term zuiki means the leaf stalk of both C. gigantea and C. esculenta.

Colocasia gigantea is close to Alocasia macrorrhizos and is thought to be produced from natural crossing between A. macrorrhizos and C. esculenta.

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