#dioscorea

I had a question about how Dioscorea elephantipes grows, and I love this guy so much I figured I’d talk about it a bit!

So basically, this plant has a woody swelling at the base that expands via the cracks you see forming on it. It’s kind of like being able to watch a tree grow rings (except that there’s a ring for every time the plant wakes up and grows, which can be multiple times per year). The photo on the left is from a couple months after I was gifted this plant as a seedling in 2021. The part that photosynthesizes is a vine that pops out of the top when the plant is actively growing. Right now mine is dormant, so there’s no vine and it kind of looks like a wooden baseball.

The ube tubers I bought like half a year ago woke up! I was nervous they were just going to rot or something. Look how pretty the plant is! :3 Mostly we just see ube in processed form (and I suspect some ube products might just be purple sweet potato or dyed taro) so most people don’t know what the tuber or the plant looks like. (Most ube graphics in marketing items are actually sweet potatoes, which are morning glories and not yams.)

This is my own Filipino version of a decorative aroid.

I'm going to see if they take well to stem cuttings and sell and gift them to people who want a pet yam hehe

Dioscorea elephantipes

涼しいこの時期グングン成長中で

Wild Yam,  Dioscorea villosa

an incredible native edible and one that I had never catched in bloom until recently in Adams County, Ohio. This species is wide spread throughout the North of North America, Midwest, and Eastern United States. 

In other notes this plant is also an associated species of medical research and importance.