Plant · P-270

Arrowroot

Maranta arundinacea

Arrowroot's rhizome is ground into a fine, easily digested starch used to thicken soups, sauces and pastries without leaving any mealy flavor - and unlike almost every other tropical root crop, it carries no known hazards raw or cooked. It is genuinely happy in shade, even full shade, which is unusual for a starch crop and makes it useful under a canopy or on a shaded side of a building where nothing else edible will produce. It is frost-tender and needs acidic soil - two problems solved by the same fix, growing it in a container or raised bed of acidic potting mix that can be kept frost-free over winter, since neither cold nor alkaline clay ground will work. It is also slow: a rhizome needs 300-365 days to mature, so where the frost-free season runs shorter than that, the planting has to carry over into a second year rather than finishing in one season.