Taro
Taro has a wide variety of names, including talo, kalo, gabi, arvi, jimbi, kókó, inhame, and malanga. It might have first come from Southeast Asia or India, but spread widely across the globe early in the history of civilization and became widely naturalized.
#Human usage
Taro might have become one of the first vegetables domesticated by humans. People eat taro's starchy corms, most often boiled, as well as young leaves and stems (boiled twice). While toxic in its raw form, cooking diminishes the toxins. Once cooked, though, it provides many important nutrients (including vitamins A, B, and C; potassium; magnesium; calcium; and iron) and proves so easy to digest that one can feed it to an infant.
#Taro People
A community that specializes in relationship with taro will invariably tend towards horticulture, and therefore live in settled villages at least part of the year. Often these communities practice swidden cultivation, growing different guilds of plants at different stages and moving around the jungle in a regular cycle. They will often plant taro in traditional "banana circles" with banana, cassava, lemongrass, and sweet potato. Other times, they may intercrop taro with coconut, coffee, cocoa, or breadfruit.
Because taro holds so much importance in native Hawaiian culture, a community specializing in relationship with taro (or kalo, in Hawaiian) may trace their descent from Hawaiians -- whether they still live on one of those islands or descend from Hawaiian climate refugees who settled elsewhere. Such a community may keep up the tradition of growing taro in wetlands or ponds, which dovetails nicely with freshwater fishing. Maintaining coastal wetlands in particular helps protect the land against damage caused by hurricanes. Such a community will certainly continue to make poi, a traditional staple dish of mashed taro mixed with water and sometimes fermented.