The sweet potato is native to the tropical regions of South America in what is present-day Ecuador. Of the approximately 50 genera and more than 1,000 species of Convolvulaceae, I. batatas is the only crop plant of major importance—some others are used locally (e.g., I. aquatica "kangkong" as a green vegetable), but many are poisonous. The genus Ipomoea that contains the sweet potato also includes several garden flowers called morning glories, but that term is not usually extended to I. batatas. Some cultivars of I. batatas are grown as ornamental plants under the name tuberous morning glory, and used in a horticultural context. Sweet potatoes can also be called yams in North America. When soft varieties were first grown commercially there, there was a need to differentiate between the two. Enslaved Africans had already been calling the 'soft' sweet potatoes 'yams' because they resembled the unrelated yams in Africa. Thus, 'soft' sweet potatoes were referred to as 'yams' to distinguish them from the 'firm' varieties.

The plant is an herbaceous perennial vine, bearing alternate triangle-shaped or palmately lobed leaves and medium-sized sympetalous flowers. The stems are usually crawling on the ground and form adventitious roots at the nodes. The leaves are screwed along the stems. The leaf stalk is 13 to 51 centimetres (5 to 20 inches) long. The leaf blades are very variable, 5 to 13 cm (2 to 5 in) long, the shape is heart-, kidney- to egg-shaped, rounded or triangular and spear-shaped, the edge can be entire, toothed or often three to seven times lobed, cut or divided. Most of the leaf surfaces are bare, rarely hairy, and the tip is rounded to pointed. The leaves are mostly green in color, but the accumulation of anthocyanins, especially along the leaf veins, can make them purple. Depending on the variety, the total length of a stem can be between 0.5 and 4 metres (1+1⁄2 and 13 feet). Some cultivars also form shoots up to 16 m (52 ft) in length. However, these do not form underground storage organs.

The sweet potato originates in South America in what is present-day Ecuador. The domestication of sweet potato occurred in either Central or South America. In Central America, domesticated sweet potatoes were present at least 5,000 years ago, with the origin of I. batatas possibly between the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico and the mouth of the Orinoco River in Venezuela. The cultigen was most likely spread by local people to the Caribbean and South America by 2500 BCE

Before the arrival of Europeans to the Americas, sweet potato was grown in Polynesia, generally spread by vine cuttings rather than by seeds. Sweet potato has been radiocarbon-dated in the Cook Islands to 1210–1400 CE. A common hypothesis is that a vine cutting was brought to central Polynesia by Polynesians who had traveled to South America and back, and spread from there across Polynesia to Easter Island, Hawaii and New Zealand. Genetic similarities have been found between Polynesian peoples and indigenous Americans including the Zenú, a people inhabiting the Pacific coast of present-day Colombia, indicating that Polynesians could have visited South America and taken sweet potatoes prior to European contact. Dutch linguists and specialists in Amerindian languages Willem Adelaar and Pieter Muysken have suggested that the word for sweet potato is shared by Polynesian languages and languages of South America: Proto-Polynesian *kumala (compare Rapa Nui kumara, Hawaiian ʻuala, Māori kūmara) may be connected with Quechua and Aymara k'umar ~ k'umara. Adelaar and Muysken assert that the similarity in the word for sweet potato is proof of either incidental contact or sporadic contact between the Central Andes and Polynesia.



The sweet potato arrived in Europe with the Columbian exchange. It is recorded, for example, in Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book, compiled in England in 1604.

Sweet potatoes were first introduced to the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period (1521–1898) via the Manila galleons, along with other New World crops. It was introduced to the Fujian of China in about 1594 from Luzon, in response to a major crop failure. The growing of sweet potatoes was encouraged by the Governor Chin Hsüeh-tseng (Jin Xuezeng).

Sweet potatoes were also introduced to the Ryukyu Kingdom, present-day Okinawa, Japan, in the early 1600s by the Portuguese. Sweet potatoes became a staple in Japan because they were important in preventing famine when rice harvests were poor. Aoki Konyō helped popularize the cultivation of the sweet potato in Japan, and the Tokugawa bakufu sponsored, published, and disseminated a vernacular Japanese translation of his research monograph on sweet potatoes to encourage their growth more broadly. Sweet potatoes were planted in Shōgun Tokugawa Yoshimune's private garden. It was first introduced to Korea in 1764. Kang P'il-ri and Yi Kwang-ryŏ embarked on a project to grow sweet potatoes in Seoul in 1766, using the knowledge of Japanese cultivators they learned in Tongnae starting in 1764. The project succeeded for a year but ultimately failed in winter 1767 after Kang's unexpected death.

Although the sweet potato is not closely related botanically to the common potato, they have a shared etymology. The first Europeans to taste sweet potatoes were members of Christopher Columbus's expedition in 1492. Later explorers found many cultivars under an assortment of local names, but the name which stayed was the indigenous Taíno name of batata. The Spanish combined this with the Quechua word for potato, papa, to create the word patata for the common potato.

Though the sweet potato is also called batata (בטטה‎) in Hebrew, this is not a direct loan of the Taíno word. Rather, the Spanish patata was loaned into Arabic as batata (بطاطا‎), owing to the lack of a /p/ sound in Arabic, while the sweet potato was called batata ḥilwa (بطاطا حلوة‎); literally ('sweet potato'). The Arabic batata was loaned into Hebrew as designating the sweet potato only, as Hebrew had its own word for the common potato, תפוח אדמה‎ (tapuakh adama, literally 'earth apple'; compare French pomme de terre)

Sweet potato dishes need to be classified into those that use the tubers (they are often cooked in a similar manner to potao) and those that use sweet potato greens (young leaves and shoots).

The alphabetical list of all the sweet potato-based recipes on this site follows, (limited to 100 recipes per page). There are 140 recipes in total:

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Saint Kitts Chicken Bouillon      Origin: Saint Kitts	Soupou Gertö (Chicken with Tomato Sauce and Sweet Potatoes)      Origin: Guinea	Thieboudienne (Fish in the Manner of Dakar)      Origin: Senegal
Saint Lucia Lambi Soup with Dumplings      Origin: Saint Lucia	Spicy Sweet Potato Slices      Origin: British	Thiou a la Viande (Senegalese Beef Stew)      Origin: Senegal
Saka Saka du Mali (Malian Sweet Potato Leaf Sauce)      Origin: Mali	Spicy Vegetable Curry      Origin: India	Thiou Curry (White Rice with Curry Sauce)      Origin: Senegal
Salt Cod and Sweet Potato Fish Cakes      Origin: Bahamas	Stuffed Peppers with Sweet Potato Mash      Origin: Fusion	Tiguadege Na      Origin: Mali
Samsas (Sweet Nutty Samosas)      Origin: Bangladesh	Sweet Potato Bread      Origin: Britain	Tongabezi Chicken Curry      Origin: Zambia
Sancoche      Origin: Trinidad	Sweet Potato Casserole      Origin: Bermuda	Trini Curried Pork      Origin: Trinidad
Sancochi di Galinja (Chicken Stew)      Origin: Aruba	Sweet Potato Dumpling      Origin: Liberia	Truchas de Bonaito (White Sweet Potato Pockets)      Origin: Spain
Sancocho Dominicano (Dominican Stew)      Origin: Dominican Republic	Sweet Potato Ice Cream      Origin: American	Uli Petataws (Sweet Potato Fritters)      Origin: Indonesia
Sauce Légume      Origin: Benin	Sweet Potato Pizza Base      Origin: African Fusion	Verulam-style Curried Jackfruit      Origin: South Africa
Shattoo Water      Origin: Dominica	Sweet Potato Pudding      Origin: Saint Kitts	Wouré Burakhè Magilinri (Sweet Potato Leaf Sauce)      Origin: Guinea
Somlar Kari Saek Mouan (Chicken Red Curry)      Origin: Cambodia	Sweet Potato Roti      Origin: Jamaica	Yam with Greens, Onion, and Okra      Origin: Nigeria
Sopa de Trigo      Origin: Portugal	Sweet Potato Stew      Origin: African Fusion	Zimbabwean Sweet Potato Biscuits      Origin: Zimbabwe
Sopi Mondongo (Soul-food Soup)      Origin: Aruba	Tandoori Chicken Traybake      Origin: Britain
Soupe aux Lentilles et Legumes (Lentil and Bean Soup)      Origin: Burundi	Thiebou dieune (Street-style Senegalese Fish and Rice)      Origin: Senegal

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