Tanya Root

Does the South lack for root vegetables? In the winter produce section of the groceries, the sweet potatoes, potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, and beets overflow their bins. But once the abundance was even greater. One has to go to an island produce market in the Caribbean to witness the profusion that existed in the markets of New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, and Charleston in the 1870s. One will see piles of corms, tubers, and roots that Carolinians only read about: dasheen (the pink taro, Colacassia esculante), tanya or provision plant (the arrow leafed elephant ear Xanthosoma sagittifolium), eddoes (small taro), and even the true West African yam. In South Carolina and Georgia, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the first two roots were greatly popular and went under the name tannier (pre-1830) and tanya (post-1830). The dasheen was called the pink tanya and the arrow leaf elephant ear, the blue tanya. They were so popular in Charleston in the mid-nineteenth century that they were presented as gifts to new residents of the city.