someone wrote:
"echinosum" wrote in message
...
[...]

The history of the plants is very interesting. They were cultivated
from about 2500BC in central and southern America, and from about
700-1000AD in the Pacific Islands, including New Zealand. It was also
grown in highland New Guinea before European contact, though possibly
from more recent times. But the Philippines knew it not before
European contact. The name for them is more or less the same -
kumara or some variant - in Quechua (main Peruvian language),
Nahuatl (main Mexican language) and Polynesian languages (including
Maori), who all cultivated it before European contact. So there is
some quite strong indication of Polynesian - South American contact.
Although there is some very rare native sweet potato in Polynesia,
it is not the same species as South America, and the Polynesians
cultivated the South American version, via cuttings.

The Maori trained seagulls to pick bugs off the leaves, would you
believe it.


What a fascinating post! Thank you for the information.

Yes, indeed!


We found kumaras for sale in South Island, N.Z. in a supermarket. They
had a dark purple skin and white flesh, not at all like what we
get here. I think they were like sweet potatoes, not yams.

Seems to me there are a) sweet potatoes (brown skin, white flesh) and
b) yams, brown or purple skin, orange flesh). One is called a yam,
the other is a sweet potato. In Canada, the yam is the
orange-fleshed one, grown in the U.S. We don't have the white dry
one except in Caribbean food shops.

In general British usage, only the big things originating (I assume) in
Africa are called "yams".
[...]

--
Mike.