Giant Elephant Ear help

[Austin S.]

It's been inside all winter and has been doing pretty good. Lately, within the last month or two it has been producing bulbs, or pods, whatever they're called, like crazy. Right now it has 6 growing, total through winter has been 13 so far. But, I have no idea what to do with them. I want to end up re planting the seeds or pods, but I don't know what to do. I leave them and eventually the large green bulbs get soft. Where the heck are the seeds? Do I open the pod up. What do I do?

 

[The Snark]

Welcome to the bewildering world of the Colocasia. Here's an excellent web page to further confuse you.
http://www.exoticrainforest.com/Colocasia esculenta large pc.html

Personally, I think Colocasia is a close relative of Audrey II of Little Shop of Horrors fame.

 

[jrh3]

we have some planted but they are cut back each year and the bulbs regrow.

 

[The Snark]

Well, simplified. Those 'flowers' you have pictured aren't flowers. Just modified leaves. It does produce flowers though, little tiny things on the stems. But propagation is through the tubers, bulbs.

Going strictly by my encounters with them. We had tubers left over from some celebration where they were food. I left them dry out on the side of the driveway for several months then deciding I was never going to eat them I stuck them in a large ceramic pot with some dirt and filled it with water.
The water turned to foul smelling sludge and was a mosquito farm. The three shot out a huge mass of stems, the pot being in full sunlight, and overflowed the pot with new tubers. I noticed the mosquito swamp and turned the pot upside down. This was near the drip line of the roof.
The plant went Audrey II, threatening to take over the entire yard until the end of the rainy season. Fortunately we had a very hot dry year following and they all 'died'.
Now every year when that location gets a good soaking the remaining bits and chunks of the tubers shoot out a new mass of stems and repeat.

Umm, what else. The preferred method of control when they get into the waterways here is a backhoe. The department of irrigation gets mad at me when I dump the tubers over the river bank and I get mad at the department of irrigation for a number of reasons. The plant stems and leaves have oxalate in them so keep them away from your cattle.