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Ipomoea batatas
Also called Sweetpotato, Yam, `uala
In Singapore: Sweet Potato, Keledek, 番薯, Black Heart Sweet Potato Vine, Ornamental Sweet Potato, 甘薯藤, Sweet Potato Vine, Blackie Sweet Potato (Grown in Singapore)
Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is a trailing tropical vine grown for its starchy, sweet tuberous roots and edible leaves. It needs warm weather, a long frost-free season, and loose soil so the tubers can swell.
The sweet potato or sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas) is a dicotyledonous plant in the morning glory family, Convolvulaceae. Its sizeable, starchy, sweet-tasting, tuberous roots are used as a root vegetable, which is a staple food in parts of the world. Cultivars of the sweet potato have been bred to bear tubers with flesh and skin of various colors. Moreover, the young shoots and leaves are eaten as greens with nutritional composition comparable to spinach. The sweet potato and the potato are only distantly related, both being in the order Solanales. Although darker sweet potatoes are often known as yams in parts of North America, they are even more distant from actual yams, which are monocots in the order Dioscoreales.
The sweet potato is native to the warm tropical regions of South America in modern Ecuador. Of the approximately 50 genera and more than 1,000 species of Convolvulaceae, I.
Tropical white morning-glory · Swamp morning-glory · Ginger-leaf morning-glory · Mile a minute vine · Gloria de la manana · Redstar · Ipomoea corymbosa · Lady Doorly's morning-glory · Beach morning-glory · Oceanblue Morning Glory · Whitestar · Spanish Flag
[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Sweet potato 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.
Pet safety from the ASPCA toxic and non-toxic plant lists.
