Breakfast Nibbles: Blueberries, Tomatoes, Coffee, Assorted seeds, African potato, Branding, Mobiles, Food, Myanmar

by Jeremy on May 27, 2008

{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

Frank May 27, 2008 at 6:23 am

Amadumbe is an African word for taro, it could however be a selected strain, but I’m not really sure

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Luigi May 27, 2008 at 9:50 am

Thanks, Frank. That’s what my googling suggested, but you can never tell. Is the language Zulu?

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Bob June 20, 2009 at 6:24 am

The word is Zulu, but also is also anglicized as Madumbe as in Zulu the “A” is almost silent. The plant is a Taro species grown in Natal and Eastern Cape in South Africa and looks more like the common Arum than the tropical Taro, the corm looks like the Arum corm. Just boiled it is delicious, unlike the Taro which is rather bland.

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Luigi June 20, 2009 at 1:28 pm

It looks to me like a wild-type Colocasia esculenta.

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Bob June 21, 2009 at 4:38 am

I am currently based in New Zealand and have access to Taro in a few varieties , via the Pacific Island communities, one of which is the wild version, which has notably black stems. This is not true of Madumbi, which also has a flower very similar to the Arum. I would be very keen to grow the South African variety as it is a very different flavour to the common Pacific Taro which as previously noted is very bland. Here is a link to a picture of the flower flickr.com/photos/tags/amadumbe/

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