A good many members of the Convolvulus Family make us happy by their beauty, but some of them do more than this. The sweet potato, for instance, gives us something to eat. You know what it gives us, but probably you did not know the sweet potato is a convolvulus and first cousin to the morning-glory and moonflower, and that it has come to us all the way from India.
Some say its home is in the East Indies too, and when you go there, if you look in the right place, you may see it growing wild. I doubt if the wild plant bears such big potatoes though; probably they are the result of long cultivation.
Sweet Potato Vine.
It is also said that its home is in tropical America. Very likely it belongs to all these places. Some plants have a way of living all over the world at once.
How they managed to get separated so far is a problem we must try to solve some day.
The sweet potato generally lies flat on the ground and sends out long stems in all directions. Its leaves, as you can see, are more or less like morning-glory and bindweed leaves. Its flowers are also like morning-glories, though they are not so pretty. It has a habit of storing up quantities of starch and sugar in its roots. It does this, hoping to use the starch and sugar again as food in forming new shoots. But sometimes we step in and disarrange all these fine plans, for we, too, need starch and sugar as food, and we take the big sweet roots and eat them.
People plant large fields of sweet potatoes, particularly in the South. So next time you eat a sweet potato, remember it is one kind of morning-glory which has given it to you.
The sweet potatoes are no relation whatever to our common potatoes; they do not belong to the same family.
The sweet potato is not the only useful morning-glory. There is the jalap, though if you have ever made its acquaintance you may differ from me as to its value; for however useful it may be from the doctor’s point of view, it certainly possesses properties which are quite the reverse of agreeable.