Creeping vine with milky sap, glabrous or pubescent, with enlarged tuberous edible roots; leaves ovate-orbicular, entire or palmately 3-7-lobed or -parted, cordate or subcordate, 4-15 cm long, 3-11 em wide, on petioles commonly 3-15 cm long; flowers several to many in long-peduncled cymes; calyx-lobes briefly mucronate, about 10-15 mm long; corolla usually pale rose-violet, rarely albino, 3-5 cm long; darker (purplish) in the throat; ovary mostly pubescent; fruit a capsule.

Native of Tropical America; long ago introduced to Asia and the Pacific, throughout Polynesia; still known in many places by a form of its Aztec name "kamotli". Cultivated for the edible tubers, which in Southern U.S.A. are often called 'yams' (in error, as they are not at all related to Dioscorea). IPOMOEA FISTULOSA Martius ex Choisy in DC. Prod. 9: 349. 1845.