In message , Rusty Hinge
writes
Dave Poole wrote:
Charlie Pridham wrote:
Anyone growing them? I think I have Dioscorea batatas, I was given a
small plant a couple of years ago and this year its decided to go mad!
but I am not sure how to crop it with a view to keeping the plant alive
as well. Seems to be hardy and I assume its the swollen tubers one eats?
Charlie, you should soon see small, adventitious tubers forming in
the
leaf axils. These can be saved at the end of the season for growing
on to produce new plants and are too small to be used in the kitchen.
The root tubers are dug and cooked after a few years when they have
reached a good size. They need a thorough boiling and/or roasting
because of varying levels of calcium oxalate present, which is not a
good dietary supplement! The Americans can get a bit hysterical
about this because in mild climates it is a highly invasive vine that
can run on for 20+ metres and smother everything. I'm not so sure it
would be that much of a problem here even in the 'mild' SW

I'm starting a small tuber salvaged from a box in an Indian shop. (No,
they've run out of Indians for sale.) It (the yam) is in a flower-pot
on a sunny window-sill and hasn't emerged from the compost yet.

Just guessing, but I wouldn't expect a yam to be hardy - the tuber(s)
may escape frost if protected though.

ISTR reading soewhere that bindweed is the only British member of the
family.

You're probably confusing yams and sweet potatoes. Dioscorea batatas, as
mentioned above, is a monocot (more closely related to wheat than to
bindweed).

The sweet potato is Ipomoea batatas, which is a member of
Convolvulaceae. 5 of the British bindweed species (hedge, large, hairy,
field and sea) belong to this family. They are the only native members
of the family, but fide Stace kidneyweed (Dichondra) is naturalised
locally in Cornwall, and some species of Ipomoea occur casually.

The other two British bindweed species (black, copse) belong to the
Polygonaceae (dock family).

I'm also growing eddoes and sweet potatoes - both in planters.

--
Stewart Robert Hinsley