Thanks,
Phil

Well, when I was growing up, we had yams looking very much like your orcas seen in the second picture regularly for Sunday roasts. The yams became soft and squishy, tasting sweetish, floury and a faint woodsy flavour. Mmmmm I must roast some someday soon! The kinds of yams we get here are both the long thin tuber and the short stubby one in your picture, although the more common variety is the short stubby one.

I’ve not seen the other kinds in the first photo.

Taro is called taro here in NZ Aotearoa. I’ve never been to the Islands, but I suspect they would call them yams up there.

Kumara on the other hand are another kettle of fish. A guilty treat, indulged too often, is kumara chips from the local burger place. Kumara are sweet potato. When I was a wee lad, you could only get the purple kind – grown in Dargaville – knobly and gnarly and delicious oh so delicious roasted. Now you can get orange kumara and also a pale gold one. The purple kind is still the best kind and most popular.

Thanks for the comment!

Are you sure about them being called yams? I always thought yam was another name for sweet potato. As I understand it, Oca usually stays crisp after cooking, but sweet potatoes will become soft when cooked. Are your yams soft or crisp?

Thanks for stopping by.

Hi Mike,

I remember reading about amaranth on your blog. I really want to make sure you know not only do I love your blog, but I also really enjoy the comments you leave here and other places.

I think there are lots of reasons to avoid transporting plants long distances, and you mentioned several good ones. Another is acclimation issues, as you have a much better chance of success if you grow something that’s already suited to your local climate. After all, why transport anything half way across the world when you can get it locally? Plants are no exception. It’s important to understand however, that there are few known issues of diseases or invasive species when it comes to fruit and vegetable seeds. Tubers and live plants are another story!

On the other hand, free trade of plant genetics between gardeners is very important to global biodiversity. The Incan plants mentioned in this post are in reality endangered in their local habitat. Just like the rest of us, the Andean people can more easily go to the supermarket and buy processed foods than they can find their own local foods. If worldwide interest in these plants doesn’t develop, they will simply disappear. It’s really their last hope that they be promoted by home gardeners.

CIP is the main organization promoting native Andean foods, and they publish a list of all individuals and organizations that have requested plant materials from them. Only a handful of requests were made in 2007. At the moment, there is simply not enough interest in these plants to ensure their survival.

Of course invasive plants and diseases will always be an issue, but when it comes to Agricultural Biodiversity, the more places a particular plant is grown the better.

There is also a particular camaraderie that goes together with gardeners sharing plant materials. It’s exciting and fun for bloggers to share plant materials and grow each other’s plants. There are simply not enough people growing heirloom plants in their gardens, and you are only too familiar with the issues of growing it on a commercial basis!

Anything I can do to promote the idea of heirloom gardening or make it exciting, I will do. Even if this means sending a packet of otherwise ordinary seeds half way across the world in an envelope. We all have to make decisions about what things are important enough to do, even if they are a little wasteful of natural resources or money, and this is one thing I think is worth while.

Sharing seeds and transporting them long distances is also a very important part of world history. Europeans brought seeds with them on the Mayflower, and until WWII they were a major part of world commerce. To me it’s not taking a plant out of it’s native habitat that’s the controversial thing to do, and it’s all the attempts to restrict or regulate people’s freedom to use any genetic plant material anywhere they want that’s the unnatural thing to do.