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 tropical regions of South America in modern Ecuador. Of the approximately 50 genera and more than 1,000 species of Convolvulaceae, I. batatas is the only crop plant of major importance—some others are used locally (e.g., I. aquatica 'kangkong' as a green vegetable), but many are poisonous. The genus Ipomoea that contains the sweet potato also includes several garden flowers called morning glories, but that term is not usually extended to I. batatas. Some cultivars of I. batatas are grown as ornamental plants under the name tuberous morning glory and sometimes used in a horticultural context.
Description
The flowers, buds, and leaves of the sweet potato, which resemble those of the morning glory
Seeds
The plant is a herbaceous perennial vine, bearing alternate, triangle-shaped or palmately lobed leaves and medium-sized, sympetalous flowers. The stems usually crawl on the ground and form adventitious roots at the nodes. The leaves are screwed along the stems. The leaf stalk is 13 to 51 centimetres (5 to 20 inches) long. The leaf blades are very variable, 5 to 13 cm (2 to 5 in) long, the shape is heart-, kidney-, to egg-shaped, rounded or triangular, and spear-shaped, the edge can be entire, toothed, or often three-...
