Apropos Rhizowen’s hymn to “the connection between a convolvulaceous bearing crop, a folk-blues artist and a cetacean” which we nibbled a couple of days ago, news of further consternation in the tuberous ranks. The National Agricultural Library of the USDA, no less, riffs on a poem called Yam, by Ted Kooser. ((Oh dear. See comment below. My apologies to Ted Kooser, Bruce Guernsey and especially Mary Ann Leonard, for making a complete mess of this post.)) Mary Ann Leonard uses it to sort her sweet potatoes from her yams, and both from Irish potatoes, which we all know aren’t from Ireland. Fun.
Talking of consternation, I remember receiving a visit from a relative of Peter Halford, who is well known in New Zealand as grower and breeder of oca. This bloke and his wife turned up and asked to see our yams. We took them off to look at a couple of Chinese yams (Dioscorea batatas) climbing up some bamboo canes. He looked bemused. More evidence of peoples divided by a common language? Eventually the misunderstanding was resolved and we showed him the oca patch. I later discovered that Mr Halford is known as “The Yam Man” in New Zealand. It’s hard to imagine a tuber crop that looks less like a yam than oca does, so I’d be interested to know how and why that term came to be applied to oca. God help them if they start growing Chinese yams on any appreciable scale.
Nice poem (but could cause confusion in New Zealand).
Thanks for the mention, but the poem “Yam” I reproduce in my blog was actually written by Bruce Guernsey. Ted Kooser, former Poet Laureate, writes the American Life in Poetry column on which my blog posting was based.