Elephant Ear Tubers

Question

My sister and I both grew elephant ears for the first time this summer. We are wanting to store the tubers for the winter, so we dug the plants up this week. This probably sounds stupid, but we don’t see any tubers or bulbs, as some people call them. We thought we would have a large bulb when we dug them up, but all we see is roots and something thicker than the roots that could be tubers but they are only about 6″ long and about as round as a pencil. Are these things the tubers? They do not look like the bulbs we have seen for sale for elephant ears and they are not nearly as big as the tubers we store from cannas and other tropicals. Thank you for any help you can give us!

Answer 1

There should have been a tuber and with elephant ears. They are rather large – about the size of a softball, maybe a baseball. They would be round, brown and knobby. If you did not find one, it is possible that the soil where they were growing was poor and the plants were unable to replenish their tubers. I would check the area again, maybe a bit deeper. If you can’t find anything, keep the thicker parts of the roots as tubers. They may be smaller due to not be able to store enough food over the summer.