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 fordii is a climbing yam from southern China grown for its large, starchy tubers (rhizomes), which are cultivated for food and traditional medicine. It needs warm, humid conditions and a long, deep, loose soil to produce good tubers.
Dioscorea fordii is a herbaceous vine with oppositely arranged leaves and large, starchy rhizomes which grow vertically into the soil. It is indigenous to the Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, and Zhejiang provinces of China, where it is typically found in forest areas or on disturbed ground beside roads or rivers.
The species is cultivated in China for food and as use in traditional Chinese medicine. Compared with the well known Chinese yam, Dioscorea polystachya, D. fordii exhibits a higher starch content, but a lower protein content. Nutrient composition of the rhizome of the plant was conducted, revealing that it contains approximately 76.5% starch, 9.9% protein, and 1.03% fiber by dry weight.
Dioscorea abyssinica · Water yam · Air yam · Yellow guinea yam · Black Bryony · Yam · Elephant's Foot · Wild Yam · Elephant's Foot Yam · Lesser yam · Yam · Intoxicating yam
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Dioscorea fordii 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.
