Fun Facts
- Sweet potatoes are loaded with vitamin A. They’re also a good source of fiber, vitamin B6, and potassium.
- Sweet potatoes can be long and thin or fat and chunky. They are orange, white, or even purple.
- Potatoes and sweet potatoes aren’t related. Potatoes are in the deadly nightshade family; sweet potatoes are related to bindweed (morning glory). Potatoes are tubers, while sweet potatoes are roots.
- Most of America’s sweet potatoes come from North Carolina.
- George Washington grew sweet potatoes on his plantation.
- Sweet potatoes came from Central or South America. Christopher Columbus’s men were the first Europeans thought to taste sweet potatoes.
- Sweet potatoes need a long, warm growing season.
Vocabulary
- Root: the part of a plant that carries nutrients from the soil to the plant
- Tuber: plant nodules that grow underground
Questions and Answers
Question: Are yams and sweet potatoes the same thing?
Answer: The “yams” you see in the grocery store are probably sweet potatoes. True yams grow in the Caribbean. They have a rough, scaly skin and they’re lower in nutrients than sweet potatoes.
Learn More
Head here for lesson plans about sweet potatoes.