This garden features visual and physical elements of texture. The specimens in The Texture Garden express texture in a visual way - you’ll notice qualities of coarseness or fineness through leaf size and arrangement. Giant upright elephant ears (Alocasia macrorrhizos), also called giant taro, are used here for their leaf size and shape, as well as for the waxy quality of the leaves, which causes rain water to bead up and fall drop by sparkling drop onto the ground. Giant taro plants are typically grown throughout the tropics for food and must be cooked to be edible. The best known dish is probably the Hawaiian staple called poi, a paste-like food made from fermented taro roots.