Also 8 tarrow, 9 tara, tarro. [Native Polynesian name, found by Cook in the Sandwich Islands.] A food-plant, Colocasia antiquorum, N.O. Araceæ, cultivated in many varieties (C. esculenta, macrorhiza, etc.) in most tropical countries for its starchy root-stocks, or its succulent leaves or stems, which in a raw state are acrid, but lose their acridity by boiling.
1779. Cook, Voy. Pacific (1784), III. V. iv. 79. Each man carrying … bread-fruit, taro, and plantains in his hand. Ibid., vi. 106. These plantations consist of the tarrow or eddy root, and the sweet potatoe [etc.].
1802. Brookes’ Gazetteer (ed. 12), s.v. Ranai, It produces very few plantains and bread-fruit trees, but abounds in yams, sweet potatoes, and taro.
1894. Dublin Rev., Oct., 460. Yams and taros are cultivated.
b. attrib., as taro-patch, -plain, -plant, -plantation, -root, -swamp.
1814. W. Brown, Hist. Propag. Chr. among Heathen, II. 400. A large piece of ground stocked with breadfruit, cocoa nuls, and tarro roots.
1846. Lundie, Mission. Life Samoa, xxii. 141. All are busy building houses and clearing for taro-patches.
1847. Whittier, Dan. Wheeler, 79. Amidst Owyhee’s hills of blue And taro-plains of Tooboonai.
1894. Daily News, 11 Sept., 6/1. Streams of water … fertilising thousands of taro plantations.
1894. B. Thomson, S. Sea Yarns, 111. The taro swamp was hard and fissured.
