Common Name: Yams
Description
Dioscorea alata, known as purple yam and many other names, is a species of yam, a tuberous root vegetable. The tubers are usually bright lavender in color, hence the common name, but they may sometimes be white. It is sometimes confused with taro and the Okinawa sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas cv. Ayamurasaki), although D. alata is also grown in Okinawa where it is known . . . . .Read more
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Meet the crops
Annona reticulata
Common Name:Custard Apple
Description
Annona reticulata is a low, erect tree, with a rounded or spreading crown and trunk 25-35 cm thick. Height ranges from 5-10 m.
The ill-smelling leaves are deciduous, alternate, oblong or narrow-lanceolate, 10-20 cm long, 2-5 cm wide, with conspicuous veins.
Flowers, in drooping clusters, are fragrant, slender, with 3 outer fleshy, narrow petals 2-3 cm long; light-green externally and pale-yellow with a dark-red or purple spot on the inside at the base. The flowers never fully open.…Read more
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Mangifera indica
Common Name:Mango
Description
Mangifera indica is a large evergreen tree to 20 m tall with a dark green, umbrella-shaped crown. Trunk stout, 90 cm in diameter; bark brown, smoothish, with many thin fissures; thick, becoming darker, rough and scaly or furrowed; branchlets rather stout, pale green and hairless. Inner bark light brown and bitter. A whitish latex exudes from cut twigs and a resin from cuts in the trunk.
Leaves alternate, simple, leathery, oblong-lanceolate, 16-30 x 3-7 cm, on flowering branches, up to 50 cm on sterile branches, curved upward from the midrib and sometimes with edges a little wavy. Young leaves red, aging to shiny dark green above, lighter below, with yellow or white venation; petioles 4.5 cm long, striate and swollen at the base.Read more
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Momordica charantia
Common Name: Bittergourd
Description
Momordica charantia, known as bitter melon, bitter gourd, bitter squash, or balsam-pear in English, has many other local names. Goya from Okinawan and karela from Sanskrit are also used by English-language speakers and pavakai in Tamil.
It is a tropical and subtropical vine of the family Cucurbitaceae, widely grown in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean for its edible fruit, which is extremely bitter. Its many varieties differ substantially in the shape and bitterness of the fruit. This fruit is known as “Pare” (paray) in Indonesia and is widely grown and fertile throughout the land of Indonesia. . . . .Read more
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