Talk:Eddoe

Classification

Other than the one old book cited, I can't find anything referring to Eddoe as C. esculenta var. antiquorum. Some sources list antiquorum as 'Wild Taro'. This study distinguishes 'dasheen' and 'eddoe' types of C. esculenta, without giving them separate names, and says that the eddoe type has cormels forming on the main corm. According to this book, those cormels are called 'eddos' in the West Indies (the book also mentions var. antiquorum separately, without connecting it to eddo(e). Bearing all this in mind, I'm going to remove the classification of eddoe to var. antiquorum for now. Thomas Kluyver (talk) 16:41, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

If you do that, then you should also remove var. esculenta from the Taro page, and "this article describes the 'dasheen' form of taro; another variety is called eddoe" because you are removing the information that they are formally classified as varieties. If you are going to do that, then the Eddoe page should really be removed entirely, and arguably the Taro page as well, because there is already a Colocasia esculenta page about the species. I think that would be a pity, and potentially there could be discussion of culinary uses on the Eddoe page. So the Oxford book of food plants says that there are two varieties, but doesn't say which is which, but it does refer to the small round "variety" used in Japan as Eddoe. GRIN doesn't list any varieties. I think what's going on here is that the Oxford book is saying that Purseglove's taxonomy is old but we don't have anything to replace it with, and GRIN isn't committing itself for the same reason. Since Wikipedia is a secondary database that follows others, rather than coming to its own taxonomic conclusions, I'm putting the variety info back, i.e. we follow the most up-to-date authorities, which in this case might be from 1972. Your Ugandan reference cites a publication from International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, 1999, and it would be great if we could see what that says! (I'd lay a small bet that it follows Purseglove.) Nadiatalent (talk) 14:29, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, all these names are hopelessly confounded. Taro can refer to several plants, and eddoe seems to have distinct meanings, albeit within one species. The IPGRI "descriptors" can be had here, but they don't cite Purseglove, nor even mention eddoe. This paper says "The existing taxonomic differentiation (var. esculenta vs. var. antiquorum) which is based on this attribute, appears unreliable and should be avoided." Oh, and here's (pp. 4-7) a decent summary of the situation. The impression I get is that the variety classification is largely being abandoned, although some people are still hanging on to it. Thomas Kluyver (talk) 15:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Interesting! Unfortunately, I don't have time to work on this just now, maybe later this week. I'm wondering whether the Taro page should be renamed to Dasheen, since there is already a nice disambig. for Taro. What do you think of that small step? Nadiatalent (talk) 15:57, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm. Although "taro" can refer to several species, its main use without a prefix (giant ~, swamp ~, etc.) is for C. esculenta, so I think it makes sense for "Taro" to go to a page on that species. The current wording of the introduction there is my own best effort to make it make sense–previously, the page said that taro was any of several species, before launching into describing just one. From a botanical point of view, it makes most sense to have Taro redirect to Colocasia esculenta, with articles at Dasheen and Eddoe for culinary uses; but obviously that's not how things work from a culinary angle, because people largely call the foodstuff "taro", not "dasheen". Also, judging by the length of the article at taro, I suspect that some of the uses should actually be under eddoe, or even some of the other edible aroids. Perhaps there's an argument for "taro" being about the food, not specific to one taxonomic group, but it seems rather a cop out. I'm hampered in that I have little knowledge of what different people informally refer to as "taro". I'm not sure that I've ever even eaten it! Thomas Kluyver (talk) 17:15, 19 January 2011 (UTC)