Talk:Xanthosoma sagittifolium

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Corm or tuber?
Is the root a corm or tuber? Badagnani (talk) 05:06, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The scientific literature seems equally unclear about this. There are more sources mentioning a tuber, but there are still quite a few mentioning corms. Thomas Kluyver (talk) 14:18, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

This plant has corms and rhizomes per David Lentz and Jorge Leon. Discussion of Xanthsoma saggitifolia from the University of Colorado at Boulder research paper on an archeological study of a prehistoric Mayan village site (Ceren, El Salvador) that includes a discussion of contemporary home gardens in the present town adjacent to the prehistoric site, Joya de Ceren. The research report Mayan Agriculture South of the Ceren site, El Salvador, edited by Payson Sheets and Christine Dixon may be found as a pdf file on the UC website http://www.colorado.edu/news/r/7b3e517b5b98a84c7cc842b9797cf3f4.html.Citations for the botanical description are as follows: Lentz, D.L., M.P. Beaudry-Corbett, M.L. Reyna de Aguilar, and L. Kaplan.1996 Foodstuffs, Forests, Fields, and Shelter: A Paleoethnobotanical Analysis of Vessel Contents from the Ceren Site, El Salvador. Latin American Antiquity 7: 247-262. Leone, Jorge.1968 Fundamientos Botanicos de los Cultivos Tropicales. San José, Costa Rica: El Instituto Interamericano de Ciencias Agrícolas de la OEA. Following is the botanical description of X. saggitifolium: Domesticated both in the new world and the old world, Xanthosoma is a root crop that contains petioles and stems attached to the end of the blade and flowers ascending all the way to the tip. Xanthosoma goes by a variety of names, including cocoyam, yautia (the Antilles), malanga (Central America), angaritos (Brazil), tiquisque (Mexico and Central America), and otó (Panama) (Leone 1968:132). Xanthosomes typically grow 1-2 meters in height above ground, with green or violet foliage, and consist of a subterranean stem or corm (mass of roots) and a crown of large leaves. The particular kind of Xanthosome found at Cerén is called Xanthosoma saggitifolium (Lentz et al. 1996). X. saggitifolium has sagittate (arrow-head shaped) leaves and large lobes in addition to violet leaves and petioles, and yellow rhizomes (Leone 1968:133). Externally, the corm appears divided into narrow horizontal internodes and is covered by scales or fine dry, fibrous leaves emerging from the nodes. The corms contain many cells filled with crystals of calcium oxalate, which are most numerous in the cortical region of the plant. The oxalate is found in bundles of crystalline needles, which quickly expand when the wall of the cell that contains them is broken. Upon cooking or roasting the corm, the crystals disappear and the gelatinous cover that wraps them is all that remains. These crystalline needles can cause a prickling sensation, or even a severe allergy, which makes cooking the corm that much more important (Leone 1968:134). [User edited by Dr. S. Bianco 1 December 2011] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.248.170.231 (talk) 08:22, 1 December 2011 (UTC)


 * A corm is a vertical swollen stem with papery leaves covering it. Tubers are swollen organs, either roots (root tubers) or stems (um, stem tubers). This picture of X. saggitifolium shows horizontal swollen organs, with no indication of scale leaves.  The enlarged picture shows a swollen organ with what look like internodes and buds (like the "eyes" of a potato), which shows it's a stem.  As it's a horizontal swollen stem with no covering I think this shows it must be a stem tuber, not a corm.  Richard New Forest (talk) 19:58, 10 December 2009 (UTC)


 * This photo claims to show Xanthsoma (linked from ), as does this page. They could be confusing edible aroids, of course, but I could believe that those have scale leaves. Thomas Kluyver (talk) 17:41, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
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Added Information on Cultivation
I added new information about the cultivation of the plant.

I'm open to comments and feedback! Vibusi (talk) 13:51, 26 November 2023 (UTC)