Sweet potato

Appearance

The plant is a herbaceous perennial vine, bearing alternate heart-shaped or palmately lobed leaves and medium-sized sympetalous flowers. The edible tuberous root is long and tapered, with a smooth skin whose color ranges between yellow, orange, red, brown, purple, and beige. Its flesh ranges from beige through white, red, pink, violet, yellow, orange, and purple. Sweet potato cultivars with white or pale yellow flesh are less sweet and moist than those with red, pink or orange flesh.

Naming

Although the soft, orange sweet potato is often called a "yam" in parts of North America, the sweet potato is very distinct from the botanical yam , which has a cosmopolitan distribution, and belongs to the monocot family Dioscoreaceae. A different crop plant, the ''oca'' , is called a "yam" in many parts of Polynesia, including New Zealand.

Although the sweet potato is not closely related botanically to the common potato, they have a shared etymology. The first Europeans to taste sweet potatoes were members of Christopher Columbus's expedition in 1492. Later explorers found many cultivars under an assortment of local names, but the name which stayed was the indigenous Taino name of ''batata''. The Spanish combined this with the Quechua word for potato, ''papa'', to create the word ''patata'' for the common potato.

Some organizations and researchers advocate for the styling of the name as one word—sweetpotato—instead of two, to emphasize the plant's genetic uniqueness from both common potatoes and yams and to avoid confusion of it being classified as a type of common potato. In its current usage in American English, the styling of the name as two words is still preferred.

In Argentina, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Brazil and the Dominican Republic the sweet potato is called ''batata''. In Mexico, Peru, Chile, Central America, and the Philippines, the sweet potato is known as ''camote'' , derived from the Nahuatl word ''camotli''.

In Peru, the Quechua name for a type of sweet potato is ''kumar'', strikingly similar to the Polynesian name ''kumara'' and its regional Oceanic cognates , which has led some scholars to suspect an instance of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact.

In Australia, about 90% of production is devoted to the orange cultivar named "''Beauregard''", which was originally developed by the Louisiana Agricultural Experiment Station in 1981.

In New Zealand, the original Māori varieties bore elongated tubers with white skin and a whitish flesh . Known as ''kumara'' , the most common cultivar now is the red cultivar called ''Owairaka'', but orange , gold, purple and other cultivars are also available. Kumara is particularly popular as a roasted food, often served with sour cream and sweet chili sauce.

Distribution

''Ipomoea batatas'' is native to the tropical regions in the Americas. 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 , 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 ''Ipomoea batatas''. Some cultivars of ''Ipomoea batatas'' are grown as ornamental plants under the name ''tuberous morning glory,'' used in a horticultural context.

Uses

Although the leaves and shoots are also edible, the starchy tuberous roots are by far the most important product. In some tropical areas, they are a staple food crop.Ceramics modeled after sweet potatoes or ''camotes'' are often found in the Moche culture.

In South America, the juice of red sweet potatoes is combined with lime juice to make a dye for cloth. By varying the proportions of the juices, every shade from pink to black can be obtained. Purple sweet potato color is also used as a ‘natural’ food coloring.

Cuttings of sweet potato vine, either edible or ornamental cultivars, will rapidly form roots in water and will grow in it, indefinitely, in good lighting with a steady supply of nutrients. For this reason, sweet potato vine is ideal for use in home aquariums, trailing out of the water with its roots submerged, as its rapid growth is fueled by toxic ammonia and nitrates, a waste product of aquatic life, which it removes from the water. This improves the living conditions for fish, which also find refuge in the extensive root systems.