Dioscorea rotundata
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''Dioscorea cayenensis'' subsp. ''rotundata'', commonly known as the white yam, West African yam, Guinea yam, or white ñame, is a subspecies of yam native to
Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
. It is one of the most important cultivated yams.USDA PLANTS profile for ''Dioscorea rotundata''
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Kokoro is a novel by the Japanese author Natsume Sōseki. It was first published in 1914 in serial form in the Japanese newspaper ''Asahi Shimbun''. The title translated literally means "heart". The word contains shades of meaning—notions of the he ...
is one of its most important
cultivar A cultivar is a type of cultivated plant that people have selected for desired traits and when propagated retain those traits. Methods used to propagate cultivars include: division, root and stem cuttings, offsets, grafting, tissue culture ...
s. It is sometimes treated as separate species from '' Dioscorea cayenensis''.


Domestication

Its wild progenitor is '' Dioscorea praehensilis'' and possibly also '' D. abyssinica'' (by hybridization). Domestication occurred in
West Africa West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, M ...
, along the south-facing Atlantic coast. There is insufficient documentation and insufficient research to guess how long ago that occurred.


Distribution

''D. c.'' subsp. ''rotundata'' is grown in
West Africa West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, M ...
, including countries such as Ivory Coast,
Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
and
Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
.Biodiversity and domestication of yams in West Africa: Traditional practices leading to ''Dioscorea rotundata'' Poir.
Roland Dumont ''et al.'' 2005, CIRAD-IPGRI


Linguistics

Blench (2006) reconstructs the tentative Proto-Niger-Congo (i.e., the
most recent common ancestor In biology and genetic genealogy, the most recent common ancestor (MRCA), also known as the last common ancestor (LCA) or concestor, of a set of organisms is the most recent individual from which all the organisms of the set are descended. The ...
of the Niger-Congo languages) root -ku for ''D. rotundata''.


References

Crops originating from Africa Yams (vegetable) Flora of West Tropical Africa Plant subspecies cayenensis subsp. rotundata {{Monocot-stub