Origin and Description of the Sweet Potato 5 



the crown of the plant. Though these tubers are botan- 

 ically enlarged roots, they are seldom spoken of as such 

 because of the confusion that may arise from the fact 

 that the word " root " may denote either the slender 

 fibrous feed-roots, the culls or " seed potatoes," or the 

 enlarged edible root. The word " potatoes " is the uni- 

 versal term in the southeastern states while outside this 

 territory " sweet potato " is used in contradistinction to 

 the " Irish," " round " or " white " potato. 



BOTANICAL CLASSIFICATION 



The sweet potato belongs to the Oonvolvulacese or 

 Morning-Glory family. The Convolvulaceae is a very 

 large and widely distributed family, making the problem 

 of proper classification rather difficult. The sweet 

 potato is an Ipomoea, a genus that, according to 

 House in Bailey's Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, 

 comprises " over 400 species of which more than 200 

 occur in Tropical America, chiefly in Mexico." Two 

 species are native in the northeastern states, and others 

 are run wild. The sweet potato has been accorded dif- 

 ferent designations in the divisions of this rather com- 

 plex family, by various botanists. Linnaeus gave the 

 plant the name Convolvulus Batatas, and Choisy the 

 name Batatas edvlis, while Poiret put it into the genus 

 Ipomcea, as I Batatas, the name it now holds. 



De CandoUe (Origin of Cultivated Plants) says that 

 the word Batatas is American, coming from a mistaken 

 transfer of " potato," and he mentions Humboldt as 

 using the Mexican name of Oamote, Clusius the words 

 Batatas, Camotes, Amotes, Ajes, all supposed to be of 

 American origin or at least foreign to the Old World 

 and none referring to any of the Ipomoeas. This writer 



