Information of four species with the Vietnamese name “Nua” tree belonging to Araceae and Taccaceae in Con Dao

Abstract

Four plant species in Con Dao shared the Vietnamese name “Nua” tree. They have the same herbaceous, tuber, and leaf morphology at the non-flowering stage but belong to two different families, which has caused a lot of confusion in exploitation and use in life. Among them, two species belong to the genus Tacca (family Taccaceae) as T. leontopetaloides and T. palmate, and two other species belong to the genus Amorphophallus (family Araceae) as A. macrophyllus and A. coudercii. The species T. leontopetaloides is cultivated for tubers making starch and T. palmate tubers are exploited for medicinal purposes. However, the tubers of A. macrophyllus and A. coudercii are not Amorphophallus species with edible tubers. To avoid confusion in exploitation and use, the authors described the morphological characteristics of the four above species and supported new morphological characters and distribution of two Amorphophallus species in Con Dao island.