Plantae > Tracheophyta > Liliopsida > Dioscoreales > Dioscoreaceae > Dioscorea > Dioscorea alata

Dioscorea alata (water yam)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Dioscorea alata, known as purple yam and many other names, is a species of yam, a tuberous root vegetable. The tubers are usually bright lavender in color, hence the common name, but they may sometimes be white. It is sometimes confused with taro and the Okinawa sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas cv. Ayamurasaki), although D. alata is also grown in Okinawa where it is known as beniimo (紅芋). With its origins in the Asian tropics, D. alata has been known to humans since ancient times.
View Wikipedia Record: Dioscorea alata

Attributes

Leaf Type [1]  Deciduous
Lifespan [2]  Perennial
Structure [1]  Herb

Protected Areas

Name IUCN Category Area acres Location Species Website Climate Land Use
Kakadu National Park II 4744348 Northern Territory, Australia
Pico Mogote Ecological Reserve II 3698 Cuba  
Reserva Biológica Hitoy Cerere Biological Reserve Ia 24641 Costa Rica  
Tuabaquey - Limones Ecological Reserve II 4859 Cuba  

Predators

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 2USDA Plants Database, U. S. Department of Agriculture
♦ 3Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
♦ 4HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants Gaden S. Robinson, Phillip R. Ackery, Ian J. Kitching, George W. Beccaloni AND Luis M. Hernández
♦ 5Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0