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Oxalis tuberosa
Also called New Zealand Yam, Yams
Oca is a tuberous perennial grown for its colourful, potato-like tubers, which are a staple in the high Andes. It grows best in cool, frost-free conditions with a long growing season and short days, and tolerates poor soil and high altitude.
Oxalis tuberosa is a perennial herbaceous plant that overwinters as underground stem tubers. These tubers are known as uqa in Quechua, oca in Spanish, yams in New Zealand and several other alternative names. The plant was cultivated, apparently from its wild relatives, in the central and southern Andes for its tubers, which are used as a root vegetable. Resembling the potato, it was introduced to Europe and New Zealand around the 19th century.
Grown primarily by Quechua and Aymara farmers, oca has been a staple of rural Andean diets for centuries. Of all Andean root and tuber crops, it is currently second only to potato in area planted within the Central Andean region. Oca is essential to local food security because of its role in crop rotations and its high nutritional content.
Andean farmers, including the indigenous Quechua and Aymara people, cultivate numerous varieties of oca. Oca diversity may be described with respect to morphological characters, local cultivar names, or molecular markers.
The plant is not known in the wild, but populations of wild Oxalis species that bear smaller tubers are known from four areas of the central Andean region.
Wood-sorrel · Silver Shamrock · Barrelier's woodsorrel · Creeping woodsorrel · Scurvygrass · Crimson woodsorrel · Broadleaf woodsorrel · Nieuwoudtville Sorrel · Blackspot Sorrel · Mountain woodsorrel · Redwood-sorrel · Bermuda buttercup
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Oxalis tuberosa 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.
