Be very careful what you call "sacred" when talking to Isabella Aiona Abbott.

That word gets thrown around much too often for her taste. If this feisty professor of botany at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa had it her way, "sacred" would be reserved for the truly deserving.

Like kalo, aka taro.

Abbott, who has been teaching for 60 years, will be discussing origins, cultural significance and, yes, we dare say sacredness of kalo during a lecture and demonstration at the Bishop Museum this week.

Abbott, loathe to talk about how she was the first Native Hawaiian woman to receive a Ph.D. in science more than 50 years ago, happily chatted in her packed but tidy UH office about parts of the plant, all edible ("if you cook it long enough," she directs), how Hawaiians viewed it and even recipes for one Chinese variety.

Storytelling is in her blood. She was born in Hana to a Chinese father and Hawaiian mother who "had a gift for telling stories when we were children," Abbott recalled.

"We loved the stories," she said. "A rainy day was not a punishment at all."

Through those stories, she learned Hawaiian legends and cultural practices and also the Hawaiian words to all the different plants. And she learned about taro, the favored food of Hawaiians, and its spiritual significance, especially in the creation story of Wakea, the progenitor of the plant: "Humans descended from taro," said Abbott.

In "Hawaiian Mythology," Martha Beckwith chronicles stories that tell of the growth of a plant out of a human body after burial.

"The most famous of these is that told ... of the lauloa taro that grew from the embryo child of Papa and Wakea," Beckwith writes.

As Abbott explained further, Kane, the supreme god, was the god of taro. "Because of Kane and Ku and Lono, you can see the ceremonies and culture that surround them would structure (an entire) culture," she said.

Abbott notes that this early Hawaiian culture allotted a lot more privileges to men than to women.

"In this male-dominated religion, women weren't allowed to touch the (taro) plant," she said. "Women weren't even allowed to eat it unless a man prepared it for them."

As a botanist, Abbott is quick to caution against eating raw taro, which releases fine crystals "that will make your tongue hang out." And she notes that taro was brought here.

Also on panel will be Big Island cultural specialist Hugh Lovell, who will talk about Polynesian migration and the introduction of kalo to Hawai'i as well as his current work on crosspollination of taro.

The program will also feature a poi demonstration, sampling of taro products and discussion of uses for taro.