I recently bought some elephant ear (Colocasia esculenta) corms at my local grocery store. I haven’t grown them in years, but the first time I bought them was in the late 1990s at Walmart, and the corms were several times larger than the ones bought now (for the same $5 price IIRC). These new corms are of the cultivar named Jack’s Giant and I’m curious about whether that’s the same cultivar as the earlier ones I had. But I can’t find much historical information on them. Supposedly Jack’s Giant was introduced into the market by a man named Jack de Vroomen (apparently an important figure in horticulture) of Marlboro Bulb Company (which is less than 50 miles from me), is genetically triploid, and was found in Costa Rica. But I can’t find what year it was introduced into the market. If it became available before around 30 years ago that doesn’t prove I used to have that one, but if it is more recent it proves that it isn’t…
Don’t know how ‘Jack’s Giant’ was developed, but it seems weird you found it at a grocery store, since taros sold for cooking usually produce plants small in stature.
If you’re looking for the hugest elephant ear, ‘Thai Giant’ seems to be the current champ, with massive broad leaves and eventual height up to 9 feet or more.
I currently grow Alocasia ‘Sumo’, which has less enormous leaves but gets up to 10 feet tall.
It wasn’t sold for eating, it was sold for planting.
This is what my old plants looked like in 2001.
With my original large elephant ear corms in the 1990s I used a knife to core out a number of the “eyes” to plant seperately. I didn’t try that on the one corm I bought a month ago, but after buying two more the next time I was at the store last week I snapped off five of the fair-sized baby corms on them to start developing in cups. I didn’t know how long it would take them to “wake up”, but there was growth inside of 40 hours of my putting them in dirt. This is what they look like after seven days.
