An Unusual House Plant

In the summer time I always take some of my houseplants outside.  I also plant a bunch of annuals, most of them flowers like petunias, in pots for the patio.  They are discarded at the end of the summer.  However, in one large pot I had a foliage plant known as an elephant ear.  Since that plant does not require full sunshine, I thought that it might survive the winter as a houseplant.  I brought it inside with the others before cold weather arrived.

Although it is not traditionally grown as a houseplant, it seems to be doing fine.  For the picture below, I moved it away from the window for a better photo.

The plant obviously gets its name from its enormous leaves.

I did some research on it and found out that it is also known as the taro plant.  You may have heard of taro.  The root of the plant was used by the early Polynesian inhabitants of Hawaii to make the sticky, starchy food called "poi" which was the staple of their diet.

The stems of the leaves have ridges.  Eventually those ridges separate from the branch and unfurl as new leaves.

After a leaf has given birth to a new one, it seems that it begins to droop to the ground.  Since I took the picture below, that leaf was dragging on the floor and I cut it off.

One unusual aspect of this plant is that occasionally the very tips of the leaves drip moisture.  I have no idea where this liquid is coming from.  It is usually as clear as water, but the fluid from the leaf I eventually cut off was dark in color.  Since the floor is tiled, this dripping is not harming the floor, and I wipe up any moisture when I see it.  However, because of this, I do not plan to continue to bring it inside as a houseplant in winters to come.  Elephant ear, consider yourself lucky that you had an extra year of life in Ohio!