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Dioscorea elephantipes
Also called Hottentot-bread, Elephant's Foot, Turtle Back Plant
A deciduous, slow-growing climbing plant from South Africa's dry interior, prized for its huge, partly buried, corky tuber (caudex). The key to growing it is very well-drained, gritty soil and sparse watering, with a dry rest period in summer when it loses its leaves.
Dioscorea elephantipes, the elephant's foot yam or Hottentot bread, is a species of flowering plant in the genus Dioscorea of the family Dioscoreaceae, native to the dry interior of South Africa.
This species is not difficult to cultivate, however it requires extremely coarse, well-drained soil, and sparse watering. Importantly, it is deciduous and loses its leaves in the summer. At this time it goes through a dry dormancy period. It has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Its natural habitat is the arid inland regions of the Cape, stretching from the centre of the Northern Cape (where it occurs around Springbok), south to the Clanwilliam & Cederberg area, and eastwards through the districts of Graaff Reinet, Uniondale and Willowmore, as far as Grahamstown.
Dioscorea abyssinica · Water yam · Air yam · Yellow guinea yam · Black Bryony · Yam · Elephant's Foot · Wild Yam · Lesser yam · Yam · Dioscorea fordii · Intoxicating yam
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Dioscorea elephantipes 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.
