Sweet potato

Sweet potato
Several elongated reddish brown tubers
Sweet potato tubers

Secure (NatureServe)[1]
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Asterids
Order: Solanales
Family: Convolvulaceae
Genus: Ipomoea
Species:
I. batatas
Binomial name
Ipomoea batatas

The sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is a dicotyledonous plant that belongs to the bindweed or morning glory family, Convolvulaceae. Its large, starchy, sweet-tasting tuberous roots are used as a root vegetable.[2][3] The young shoots and leaves are sometimes eaten as greens. Cultivars of the sweet potato have been bred to bear tubers with flesh and skin of various colors. Sweet potato is only distantly related to the common potato (Solanum tuberosum), both being in the order Solanales. Although darker sweet potatoes are often referred to as "yams" in parts of North America, the species is not a true yam, which are monocots in the order Dioscoreales.[4]

The sweet potato is native to the tropical regions of South America in what is present-day Ecuador.[5][6] Of the approximately 50 genera and more than 1,000 species of Convolvulaceae, I. batatas is the only crop plant of major importance—some others are used locally (e.g., I. aquatica "kangkong"), but many are poisonous. The genus Ipomoea that contains the sweet potato also includes several garden flowers called morning glories, though that term is not usually extended to I. batatas. Some cultivars of I. batatas are grown as ornamental plants under the name tuberous morning glory, and used in a horticultural context. Sweet potatoes can also be called yams. When soft varieties were first grown commercially, there was a need to differentiate between the two. African slaves had already been calling the 'soft' sweet potatoes 'yams' because they resembled the yams in Africa.[7] Thus, 'soft' sweet potatoes were referred to as 'yams' to distinguish them from the 'firm' varieties.

  1. ^ NatureServe (2024). "Ipomoea batatas". Arlington, Virginia. Archived from the original on 15 February 2024. Retrieved 15 February 2024.
  2. ^ Purseglove, John Williams (1968). Tropical crops: D. Longman Scientific and Technical. New York: John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 978-0-582-46666-1.[page needed]
  3. ^ Woolfe, Jennifer A. (5 March 1992). Sweet Potato: An Untapped Food Resource. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (CUP) and the International Potato Center (CIP). ISBN 9780521402958.
  4. ^ Keoke, Emory Dean; Porterfield, Kay Marie (2009). Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World: 15,000 Years of Inventions and Innovations. Infobase Publishing. p. 256. ISBN 978-0-8160-4052-0.
  5. ^ "Mystery of sweetpotato origin uncovered, as missing link plant found by Oxford research". University of Oxford. 24 January 2022. Archived from the original on 2 September 2023. Retrieved 24 March 2024.
  6. ^ Muñoz-Rodríguez, Pablo; Wells, Tom; Wood, John R. I.; Carruthers, Tom; Anglin, Noelle L.; Jarret, Robert L.; Scotland, Robert W. (22 January 2022). "Discovery and characterization of sweetpotato's closest tetraploid relative". New Phytologist. 234 (4): 1185–1194. doi:10.1111/nph.17991. ISSN 0028-646X. PMC 9306577. PMID 35064679.
  7. ^ "What is the difference between sweet potatoes and yams?". 19 November 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)