Tacca

White Bat Flower (Tacca integrifolia)

Plant Characteristics

Habit		herbaceous
Lifespan:	⌛	perennial

Cultivation

Features:	✓	flowers, foliage
Flower features:	❀	purple, brown, black

Scientific Names

Dioscoreaceae >

Tacca >

Tacca is a genus of ten species of flowering plants in the order Dioscoreales, native to tropical regions of Africa, Australia, and south-eastern Asia.

Several species are cultivated as ornamental plants for their bold foliage and large flowers.

Read about Tacca in the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture

Tacca (Malayan name). Syn., Ataccia. Perennial herbs from a tuberous or creeping rhizome, adapted to the warmhouse. Leaves radical, large, petioled, sometimes undivided and entire, sometimes variously lobed or dissected: fls. at the top of erect leafless scapes in dense umbels, lurid brown or greenish; perianth 6-lobed in 2 rows; stamens 6; ovary inferior, 1-celled: fr. globose, ovoid, turbinate or elongated, usually 3-cornered or 6-ribbed, berry-like and indehiscent, rarely finally 3-valved.—About 13 species in the tropics of both hemispheres. The fl.- cluster is subtended by a few, usually 4, leaf-like or colored bracts, and intermixed with the fls. are more or less numerous, long and conspicuous, sterile, filiform pedicels, which usually droop below the fl.-cluster. Taccaceae contains only one other genus, Schizocapsa. CH The above text is from the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture. It may be out of date, but still contains valuable and interesting information which can be incorporated into the remainder of the article. Click on "Collapse" in the header to hide this text.

Cultivation

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Propagation

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Pests and diseases

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Species

Selected species

• Tacca chantrieri André - Bat flower
• Tacca flabellata J.J.Sm.
• Tacca integrifolia Ker Gawl.
• Tacca leontopetaloides Kuntze
• Tacca palmata Blume
• Tacca plantaginea (Hance) Drenth

In older texts, the genus was treated in its own family Taccaceae, but the 2003 APG II system incorporates it into the family Dioscoreaceae.

Gallery

• Tacca chantrieri
  in Thailand

• Tacca chantrieri
  close-up of the flower

• Tacca chantrieri
  fruits

References

• Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, by L. H. Bailey, MacMillan Co., 1963

External links

• w:Tacca. Some of the material on this page may be from Wikipedia, under the Creative Commons license.
• Tacca QR Code (Size 50, 100, 200, 500)