Tennessee Living

Did you think yams and sweet potatoes were the same vegetable? Well, you’re not alone – it’s a fairly common mistake for Americans to refer to certain varieties of sweet potatoes as yams.

Sure, both are angiosperms, or flowering plants, but the similarities stop there. In fact, the yam shares more traits with a daylily than it does with a sweet potato.

Native to Africa and Asia, yams are classified as monocots – plants with only one embryonic seed leaf – and are tubers, along with potatoes.

Sweet potatoes, on the other hand, are dicots – having two embryonic seed leaves – and, like carrots, are storage roots. They fall into two categories: “firm” and “soft.” Firm sweet potatoes remain hard when cooked and were produced long before the soft variety, which becomes soft and moist after cooking.

Here are a few more farm facts to digest:

Orange-fleshed sweet potatoes are very rich in Vitamin A (beta carotene), while yams don’t contain any.

Typically only found at international markets, true yams have white flesh and are starchier and drier than sweet potatoes.

Members of the morning glory family, sweet potatoes originated in Central and South America.

Around 95 percent of the 600 varieties of yams worldwide are grown in Africa.

Lincoln County leads the state in sweet potato production with 171 acres of the crop (based on the 2002 U.S. Census of Agriculture).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture requires labels with the misnomer “yam” to be accompanied with the term “sweet potato.”

Sweet Side Dish

Reader Polly Wagner originally created this Sweet Potato and Pineapple Casserole recipe to encourage her children to eat sweet potatoes, and it’s now a family favorite. Check out the recipe here.

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Magazine:
Tennessee Home & Farm, Spring 2010 Edition Edition

Headline:
Yams Versus Sweet Potatoes

Summary:
Learn the difference between the two – and which one is raised in Tennessee.

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