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Yam

The yam is a slender herbaceous vine, having large tuberous roots, which are much used as food in Africa and the East and West Indies. They are mealy, and though easy of digestion, are palatable, and not inferior to any roots now in use, either for delicacy of flavour or nutriment. They are eaten either roasted or boiled, and the flour is also made into bread and puddings. There are many varieties of the roots, some spreading out like fingers, others twisted like a serpent; others again are very small, scarcely weighing more than a pound, with a whitish ash-coloured bark, whereas the bark is usually black. The flesh of the yam is white or purplish, and viscid, but becomes farinaceous or mealy when cooked. "A species of yam (Dioscorea Batatas)," says a writer in "Chamber's Encyclopaedia," "has recently been brought from the temperate parts of China, where it appears to have been long in cultivation, and is found to succeed well in France. It is hardy enough to endure the climate even of Scotland without injury, but the heat of the summer is not sufficiently great and long-continued for its profitable growth, so that in general the plant merely lives, without producing a large tuber. The root is of a very fine quality, and attains a very considerable size. The stem requires the support of a pole, round which it twines; the leaves are more elongated and acuminated than those of the West Indian yams; the root strikes perpendicularly down into the ground, and forms its tuber often at a very considerable depth, which is sometimes inconvenient to the cultivator, but this is prevented by putting a slate under it."