Excerpts from Hawkes, Alex D. 1968. A World of Vegetable Cookery. Simon and Schuster, New York.
The genus Tacca (of the small tacca Family) contains two species of extraordinary perennial herbaceous plants which are of some importance as vegetables. These are the Tahiti or Fiji Arrowroot (Tacca pinnatifida) and the Hawaiian Arrowroot (T. hawaii-ensis). The plants have stalked, handsomely incised big leaves, and produce fantastically complicated clusters of usually purple-black flowers, surrounded by great winglike and elongate taillike bracts-a unique characteristic and gives them the appropriate common name of Bat Plant.
The profuse subterranean tuberous root stocks are very starchy, and the plants have long been cultivated for these, sometimes on a rather extensive scale, in the Pacific region. The tubers are often sizable, and occasionally are eaten, after boiling , in the areas where they are grown. They possess a bland flavor and moist texture, not unlike a poor-quality potato.
Hedrick, U.P. editor. 1919. Sturtevant's Notes on Edible Plants. Report of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station for the Year 1919 II. Albany, J.B Lyon Company, State Printers. [References Available]
TACCA PINNATIFIDA, PIA, SALEP, TACCA
is a plant of Asia and African tropics and islands of Pacific. The tubers of the tacca furnish a mealy nutriement to the inhabitants of the Society Islands and the Moluccas, where the plant is found both wild and in a state of cultivation. In the latter case, the tuberous root loses some of its original acridity and bitterness. The roots are rasped and macerated for four or five days in water and a fecula is separated in the same manner that sago is and, like it, is employed as an article of food by the inhabitants of the Malayan Islands and the Moluccas. In Otaheite, they make cakes of the meal of the tubers. The tubers form an article of diet in china and Cochin China and in Travancore, where they are much eaten, the natives mix agreeable acids with them to subdue their natural pungency. From the tubers, the main supply of the Fiji arrowroot is prepared, and an arrowroot is also made from this plant in the East Inidan province of Arracan.
TACCA PALMATA, TACCA
is a plant of Java. This is one of the taccas of the Malayan Archipelago which furnishes a food-fecula.
TACCA DUBIA Taccaceae, TACCA
is a plant of Malayan Archipelago. It is used as tacca.
