Dioscorea bulbifera

• Botanical Name : Dioscorea bulbifera L.
• Synonyms : Dioscorea pulchella Roxb.
• Common Name : Aerial Yam, Air Potato, Air Yam, Bitter Yam, Cheeky Yam, Potato Yam, Wild Yam, Varakand, Vanavel
• Plant Family : Dioscoreaceae
• Plant Form : Climbers
• Occurrence (Sectors) : 15

About Dioscorea bulbifera Plant :

• Habit : A climber with tubers large, globose or elongate and stem terete, unarmed, glabrous, bulbiferous in the leaf-axils, the bulbils warted.
• Leaves : Opposite and alternate, variable in size, membranous, dark-green, broadly ovate, acuminate, cuspidate or caudate, base cordate with a broad, deep or shallow sinus, nerves 7-8.
• Flowers :
  • Male flowers variable in size, greenish or purplish, in short slender (almost capillary), spikes close together or scattered on the branches of crowded axillary slender pendulous glabrous spikes or panicles.
  • Stamens 6, filaments short, anthers minute didynamous, pistillate 3-lobed.
  • Female flowers sessile, in axillary solitary or fascicled pendulous spikes.
• Fruit :
  • Capsules quadrately oblong, rather broader upwards with a truncate or subcordate base.
  • Seeds winged at the lower end only.
• Flowering and Fruiting Time : Throughout the year.
• Significance : Used as a hedge plant.