This is one of those posts where I hope to ghod people read the WHOLE post. Like the one I wrote years back about Yew berries being edible. Read on to discover why the answer is both YES and NO!

The answer to this very much depends on what type of Arum you are talking about, and also how much time and effort you’re prepared to put into making it edible.

The Arum family : Araceae

There’s 4,000 species of Arums worldwide, in around 140 genera. That’s a whole lot of arums to get through! This family of plants is known as the Araceae.

Arum plants have these features in common:

• Low growing
• Perennial (lives for more than 2 years)
• Tuberous (has tubers, or chubby roots, to store starch)
• Flower consists of a funnel shaped spathe and a phallic-looking spadix in the centre
• Contains poisonous calcium oxalate

A surprising number of Arums live with us as houseplants. Monstera, Peace Lily and Dumb Cane (Dieffenbachia) can all be found gracing the aisles of your local garden centre.

Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum) is a much wilder beast. This huge flower reaches 3 metres tall. It’s endangered in its natural habitat, the rainforests of Sumatra. You can, if you want to smell its scent of rotting meat, see it in all its phallic glory at Kew Botanic Gardens in London.

Titan Arum mimics the scent of meat by manufacturing chemicals found in rotting flesh. This attracts flies, which pollinate the flower. The flower spike becomes warmer than the air, and the red-purple colour of the flower helps lure insects.

Burning Raphides: Calcium Oxalate

The short answer on Arum edibility is ‘no’. Most Arum family members are packed full of calcium oxalate crystals. In many arums, these are long, sharp crystal structures called raphides.

The effect of these, if you chew on a raw leaf or root, is a burning sensation. Most people and animals stop eating the Arum at this point, so there’s little damage done except swollen, red lips or throat. Although if you have swallowed some of it, the swelling in your throat can make it hard to breathe for a while.

If, despite this warning, you keep eating the raw Arum, the calcium oxalate gets into your kidneys and creates painful kidney stones. Calcium oxalate can be found in spinach and rhubarb too, but in spinach, the microscopic crystals are square-shaped instead of needle-shaped. The square crystals don’t stab into your flesh, so they are easier to digest.

So which Arums, if any, are the safest to consume? How do we make them safe? Are there any we really shouldn’t bother with?

Meet Some Edible and Edible-ish Arums

The Arum family, or Araceae, contains around 4,000 species worldwide. Let’s have a look at some more-or-less edible Arums.

TARO (Colocasia esculenta)

The Arum family includes the Taro (Colocasia esculenta), which is an important staple food crop in Asia, Oceania, Africa and the tropics. People have been cultivating Taro for over 10,000 years.

Below is some wild Taro our guide Cristophe found for us in Montagne d’Ambre park, Madagascar.

Below is a cross-section of cultivated Taro root, and an entire Taro root. These are baked, roasted, boiled, and used to make chips and flour. Remember I said ‘baked’, as this is going to get very important if you don’t want to be throwing up razor blades.

The second half of the scientific name, ‘esculenta’, means ‘edible’ in Latin. Even so, this friendliest of Arums still inherits the family poison. Sharp crystals of calcium oxalate, known as ‘raphides’, protect its starch-rich root from grazers – and us foragers!

This is a corm (type of root) to be cooked well, not eaten raw. Taro, unlike some other members of the Arum family we will meet later, can be boiled as well as fried, baked and roasted.

For some tasty Taro recipes, click on this link to ‘Harvest To Table.’ Make sure it is cooked all the way through.

There is some argument as to the edibility of wild Taro. Forager Green Deane has experimented thoroughly with taro growing wild in Florida. He names this taro as Colocasia esculenta var aquatilis, but he suspects this feral Taro could be more closely related to wild taro than to the cultivated variety. He cooked it many ways over many hours, and it still burned when tasted.

In short : choose the cultivated taro and cook well. So, are there any wild Arums we can eat in a crisis, or even out of curiosity?

‘Indian Turnip‘ hails from Central & E. Canada to Central & E. U.S.A. It prefers woodlands and semi-shade. Plus, it’s pretty tolerant of damp soil, so in this era of climate-induced random flooding and global warming, it may succeed where other plants fail!

Notice the cluster of orange-red berries. This is a hallmark of my local UK Arum maculatum (‘Lords & Ladies’), too.

The leaves are triple pinnate (divided into 3 leaflets) and rise about 50-60cm off the ground. They’re very different from Arum maculatum‘s spear shaped leaves.

Indian Turnip, as the name suggests, was used by native First Nation peoples as an edible root. They processed it by drying it for several months, then eating it as a type of crisp. It was also cooked thoroughly, baked or roasted or made into flour.

The name ‘Dragonroot’ tells you of the raw fire of this Arum – It’s still chock full of poisonous raphide needles. It must ALWAYS be throroughly dried or cooked before eating. Dry types of heating are better than boiling – the drying effect breaks down the calcium oxalate.

LORDS & LADIES/CUCKOOPINT (Arum maculatum)

My old friend Arum maculatum from my native UK. Or acquaintance, anyhow! It grows in Europe, Turkey and Sweden.

The leaves are glossy, deep green and often have dark spots. ‘Maculatum’ means ‘spotted’ in Latin. They also have a fork at the base. The flower is white and shaped like a bishop’s hat. The seeds are bright orange and arranged in a cluster on the stem.

Most foraging bibles regard Lords and Ladies as poisonous, and they would be right. Yet again, chock full of raphides. It’s possible this plant could be used as a source of starch and carbohydrates in a crisis, as long as the steps of drying and roasting/baking are observed.

Personally, I tried digging some up in late winter and couldn’t find enough root worth bothering with. The tubers seem to be very small!

Best wait for the apocalypse, guys.

SCARCE/ITALIAN LORDS & LADIES (Arum italicum subsp. neglectum)

Scarce Lord’s and Ladies’ has cream to pale green veins in its leaves. It has a shorter, chunkier flower part, called the spadix.

In medieval times, this closely related species to A.maculatum was used as a famine food in the South of England when crops failed. You can still find it near the South Downs. It grows in Arundel, a picturesque English seaside town.

The most famous example of this is ‘Portland Sago’. Processed on the Isle Of Portland in the English Channel, A.italicum was made into an edible starch. It was dried and then cooked and made into powder. The biggest use of this was to stiffen Elizabethan ruffs, but in hard times it could be made into a thick gloopy drink resembling ‘salep’.

Salep is a Turkish drink originally made from wild orchid tubers in the genus Orchis. It’s thick, creamy and served in the winter with cinnamon and milk. Note that the tubers are carefully cleaned, dried and cooked first. Much store-bought salep is not made from orchids nowadays but from flour, as the orchids have become rare and protected by law.

SOLOMON”S LILY/BLACK CALLA LILY (A. palaestinum)

Solomon’s Lily is also known as Wild Calla or Black Calla. The flower spike and spathe are a deep purplish-black. The flower smells of rotting meat when mature, attracting flies in the same way as its bigger cousin, the Titan Arum.

Solomon’s Lily contains all the usual calcium oxalate suspects, but only the leaves are eaten in the Middle East after cautious cooking. The leaves are used in recipes with eggs, in soup, and cooked and rolled up.

Tellingly, traditional recipes call for cooking the leaves once they are completely dried. Frying them in oil is suggested in this link on Mediterranean plants as foods.

Potentially, this plant has anthelmintic (worm-ridding) and antimicrobial powers. It harbours a wide range of flavonoids, shown to be effective in treating cancer cells. Black Calla also contains phenolic acids such as rosmarinic acid, and terpenoids.

So, should we eat Arums?

Long answer – they are hard work to make edible, but it can be done, with patience, and a source of dry heat! These plants are best left to the experienced forager. Those of us with rheumatoid arthritis are best avoiding Arums, as like rhubarb, the calcium oxalate can worsen symptoms.

DRY THEM COMPLETELY. COOK THEM THOROUGHLY, PREFERABLY WITH DRY HEAT LIKE ROASTING/BAKING.

Test a small amount on your lips first. Wait a few minutes to feel if there’s any burning sensation. If there is, don’t eat it.

Remember, digging up roots, rhizomes or tubers requires permission from the landowner in the UK.

Only ever take as much as you need for yourself and your family. If you have space, grow some Arums, or help them spread their seed. It’s good just to know they are there for us in a crisis, when the three days of food in the supermarkets runs out…

xx Hedgewitch Kat xx