Ipomoea part 2: indigenous plants
Unlike the Ipomoea I posted yesterday, these are indigenous to the area and they all have large, tuberous roots that make them drought-resistant:
The creeper with the spear-shaped leaves is Ipomoea ommaneyi or Beespatat, meaning cattle sweet potato. It's not poisonous but isn't very good to eat and was eaten in the past only if nothing else was available. I missed the flowers so here is an image from Wikipedia:
Photographer: B. Attard CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)
I've posted these before, this is Ipomoea obscura
Here is the flower:
These tubers aren't edible but they are sometimes grown by collectors.
Ipomoea batatas is actually the common sweet potato and although not native to Africa but to South America, it has been cultivated for centuries after it was introduced here by early Portuguese traders.
So beautiful flowers
You can find some of those flowers at the beach here... they are basically everywhere!
Which ones: yellow or pink?
Both but the pink ones are more common. Sometimes you see all the rocks at the beach completely covered by them.
Interesting about sweet potatoes. We have this does not grow. But if you freeze ordinary potatoes, and then cook it becomes sweet. True, they do not eat such potatoes.
Sweet potato is a very different family of plants to the potatoes that you know
Is the first picture a vertical wall? If so the Ipomoea is is very aggressive.
No, it is horizontal
It’s nice to know you could eat some of these leaves!! We have the Ipomoea obscura in our garden but we rarely see the flowers!
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Beautiful Ipomoea!
I like her, especially since she does not bother me! :-)))