Dioscorrea batata!
We were thrilled to see this relative of the Eastern Wild Yam (Dioscorrea villosa) with all this reproductive potatoes in full swing.
we kept our eye open for kava kava the whole time we were on maui -- hoping that we would know this plant when we came across it, even though we have never seen it before. it was on the road to hana, coming back the same path we had previously braved earlier that morning when i screamed, "stop the car neil, its kava!" Check out its lizard's tail -- almost like Saururus cernuus, a plant called Lizard's Tail in the South East. Actually that and Anemopsis (Yerba Mansa) are the closest relatives of the Piper Family, of which Kava is a member (also Black Pepper aka the stuff we grind on our food). Kava is a super important plant that is native to the Polynesian islands and has been transported all around Polynesia and Miconesia for many hundreds of years as people moved and explored new lands roots of this were always taken; used as medicine and for ceremony Kava is the center piece of many of the islands traditional ways.
Anyways it seems to have turned out that it is not real Kava afterall, but rather the false kava aka Root Beer Plant. The leaves didnt smell like rootbeer as they are supposed to, but some kind person has directed us to the veination of the leaves as a tell tale marker for distinguishing false from true kava. the search continues.
Piper auritum
And it has knees -- giant knobby knees and much more leggy & stalky than i thought it would be.
1 comment:
I don't think that's kava (Piper methysticum). Your photo is excellent. If you look closely at the leaf, you'll see it has a midrib through the center, with veins branching out along it. Kava leaves have veins radiating out from the point where the leaf meets the stem, not along a central midrib. I think what you saw was Piper auritum, which also has a more elongated leaf than kava has.
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