The difference between sweet potato and yam

I know you'll know just by looking, the difference between a yam and a potato. I like yam a lot but I can't say I like it more than potato. Potato is much sweeter, it's no surprise they call it Sweet Potato. But the raw yam you see in the pictures are more common in Ghana than the potato is.

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But what's the difference if you think about it from a species perspective? Yams and sweet potatoes are two different species that both produce edible tubers. In some some parts of the world like for example North America, the species of sweet potato which they call Ipomoea batata is usually mislabeled as yams.

In sweet potato varieties, Ipomoea batata is the sweetest, with their orange flesh. Some varieties of sweet potatoes are whiter and more starchy, and they are the ones mostly used as the staple crop for meals.

In America, true yams not common, the term as yam is used for a specific orange sweet potato variety. In the United States, yam is a trademarked name for a sweet potato brand, so there is little distinction. It's all because of the history and the language of the people. I don't think we can say one is right or wrong, if the people agree to the way it's named, it's not going to create a problem. The confusion comes from when you have to talk to a foreigner.

It was not related to yams but I did get into a confusion with a foreigner over the same thing we call different names, years ago.

But the inconsistencies in the naming with yams and potatoes come because different outer and inner tuber structures are used in different parts of the globe. In New Zealand, this is a yam. Yams are originally from South America and called oca or Camote.

It also gets confused with the yam found in Polynesian and African cultures, which belongs to the genus D ioscorea. If you remember your agriculture lecture back in school, Yams are monocots and sweet potatoes are dicots, which means they are as distantly related like how two flowering plants could possibly be.

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