The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Dioscorea composita
Also called Barbasco
Dioscorea composita, called barbasco, is a climbing tuberous yam from Mexico and Central America, best known as a commercial source of diosgenin for making steroid hormones. It is grown mainly for its tubers in seasonally dry tropical climates rather than as an ornamental.
Dioscorea composita, or barbasco, is a species of yam in the family Dioscoreaceae. It is native to Mexico. It is notable for its role in the production of diosgenin, which is a precursor for the synthesis of hormones such as progesterone. Russell Marker developed the extraction and manufacture of hormones from D. mexicana at Syntex, starting the trade of D. composita in Mexico. Marker also discovered that the composita variety had a much higher content of diosgenin than the mexicana variety, and therefore it came to replace the latter in the production of synthetic hormones.
It chemically consists of steroidal sapogenin, diosgenin which is used to prepare synthetic hormones such as progesterone and cortisone. Diosgenin extracted from Dioscorea composita was instrumental in the development of the combined oral contraceptive pill in the 1960s – and also for the development of cortisone treatments of arthritis. Studies on Diosgenin say that it has effect on diabetic neuropathy.
Dioscorea abyssinica · Water yam · Air yam · Yellow guinea yam · Black Bryony · Elephant's Foot · Wild Yam · Elephant's Foot Yam · Lesser yam · Yam · Dioscorea fordii · Intoxicating yam
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Dioscorea composita by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
