Amorphophallus konjac

Amorphophallus konjac, commonly known as juruo (Chinese: 蒟蒻; pinyin: jǔruò), konnyaku or konjac, or moyu (Chinese: 魔芋; pinyin: móyù), is a species of flowering plant in the family Araceae. In English, it is also referred to as devil's tongue, voodoo lily, snake palm, or elephant yam. Native to China and cultivated in East and Southeast Asia, the perennial species forms a corm, the stem of which produces a purplish flower. Food made from the corm is known as konnyaku in Japanese – which can be made into white or black cake, as well as a kind of noodle called shirataki – or as the Chinese 魔芋 móyù, a term that also refers to the plant itself. Moyu was first domesticated in Southwest China about 2000 years ago, where Yi people and other early cultivators developed methods to detoxify the naturally irritating corm through repeated boiling and the use of alkaline ash water. These techniques enabled the plant to transition from a toxic wild tuber to a fiber-rich food source, and they form the basis of the traditional processing methods still used in parts of China today.