LXXXVI 
A NEGLECTED PLANT 
I SN’T IT ODD that the people 
of the temperate zones refuse 
to eat aroids, those root crops of 
the tropics that have probably 
nourished more people since time 
began than has even that prime 
grain crop, wheat! 
The aroids are plants that 
grow in wet places. The best- 
known aroid in the United States 
is the elephant’s ear, used as an ornamental plant in gar¬ 
dens. But there are government farms in the South 
where twenty tons of good food are grown on the roots 
of these aroids on a single acre. 
These food plants are extensively used in the West 
Indies, in Central America, in Hawaii, where they fur¬ 
nish poi, the national dish throughout Polynesia, China, 
India, and equatorial Africa. They furnish abundant and 
nourishing food to tropical peoples almost without effort 
on the part of the latter. But in the North people refuse 
to eat them. It is not because they are found to be un¬ 
palatable. The Department of Agriculture has raised 
abundant crops of dasheens, which belong to this group, 
brought them to Washington, and distributed them ex¬ 
perimentally. People have taken them home, cooked 
them, and said that they liked them. The general verdict 
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