What is the wild sweet potato? Get to know this wild fruit
The wild sweet potato is a multi-purpose plant that combines edible, medicinal, landscaping, and ornamental uses. Also known as di guo, di gua pao, and other names, it is a creeping woody vine in the mulberry family, genus Ficus, with milky sap throughout the plant, reaching over 10 m in length, growing along the ground, easily producing fibrous adventitious roots where it touches the ground, resembling a giant centipede, hence it is also called the creeping centipede. Because its appearance resembles a loquat, in some areas of Hubei Province and elsewhere it is called the ground loquat.
The stems of the wild sweet potato are brown, with slightly swollen nodes, producing slender adventitious roots where they touch the ground. The leaves are firm and papery, obovate-elliptic, with an acute apex, a rounded or shallowly cordate base, and finely serrate or wavy margins, with three main veins. The petiole is 1-2 cm long. The receptacle has a short stalk, clustered on leafless short branches, buried in the soil, spherical or ovoid, purplish-red when ripe, with 3 basal bracts. Male flowers are borne at the mouth of the receptacle, and female flowers are borne in another receptacle.
The stems and vines of the wild sweet potato are soft yet tough. The leaves are 2-6 cm long and 2-4 cm wide, emerald green, and do not fall through the winter. They are good fodder for herbivorous animals, especially rabbits, sheep, geese, and others, which regard them as a winter delicacy. The flowers are unisexual, clustered or solitary in the leaf axils or at branch points. The fruit is spherical, 1.5-2.5 cm in diameter. Young fruit is green, and when mature it is pale red, richly fragrant, and sweet as honey.
The wild sweet potato has characteristics such as cold resistance, drought resistance, shade tolerance, tolerance of poor soil, and tolerance of waterlogging. Even when planted in barren sand and gravel or in crevices of stone slabs, it will still grow lush and full of green. Whether in the scorching summer or the ice-and-snow winter, it spreads like brocade all year round, with green leaves like shade. Whether growing on sun-scorched hillsides or under ancient forests, its leaf color is always verdant and full of vitality. Whether in lowlands or dry mountain ridges, it can adapt with ease and remain evergreen throughout the four seasons.
The wild sweet potato is suitable for landscaping in parks or places easily trampled by visitors, and can withstand trampling by many visitors, because this tough and luxuriant stem and vine always grow in a crisscrossing manner, thus naturally “weaving” into a “giant fishing net” that can firmly “net” the loose surface soil and sandy soil. In addition, with dense leaves forming a year-round “cover,” it closely resembles a permanent green carpet laid on top. This special effect of preventing sand movement and fixing soil is unmatched by other groundcover plants, making it a top-grade choice for sand prevention and soil fixation. It can also be cultivated as a fruit, suitable for interplanting in orchards, turning traditional single-season orchards into double-season orchards. It can also be used for fruit- and foliage-viewing hanging bonsai; its flexible, emerald-green stems and vines are elegant and graceful, presenting the beautiful scene of “ten thousand strips hanging down like green silk threads.”