Dioscorea mangenotiana

Botanical Description

Dioscorea mangenotiana is a vigorous, herbaceous perennial climbing plant producing annual stems up to 30 metres long from a tuberous rootstock. These long stems twine right-handed around other plants for support, or scramble over the ground. They arise from a massive, long-lived, vertical tuber vertical tuber that increases in size year by year[ 332 Title The Useful Plants of West Tropical Africa. Publication Author Burkil. H. M. Publisher Royal Botanic Gardens; Kew. Year 1985 - 2004 ISBN Description Brief descriptions and details of the uses of over 4,000 plants. A superb, if terse, resource, it is also available electronically on the Web - see http://www.aluka.org/ ]. In time the tuber may attain as much as 60 kg in weight[ 332 Title The Useful Plants of West Tropical Africa. Publication Author Burkil. H. M. Publisher Royal Botanic Gardens; Kew. Year 1985 - 2004 ISBN Description Brief descriptions and details of the uses of over 4,000 plants. A superb, if terse, resource, it is also available electronically on the Web - see http://www.aluka.org/ ]. The plant is harvested from the wild for local use as a food.