Talk:Chinese yam

Moved/Merged/Renamed Articles
Febuary 1, 2016: I was working on merging Dioscorea opposita into Dioscorea polystachya and decided the article was much more about the actual cultural and culinary use of the tuber rather than the botany of the species. In accordance with Naming conventions (flora) I renamed the article to Chinese yam, which is by far the most commonly used vernacular of the species. Furthermore, some botanists believe Dioscorea polystachya is only native to China and was introduced to Japan and Korea, leading some to believe the Korean yam and Japanese mountain yam names are misnomers. References to Korean yam and Japanese mountain yam naming were placed in the Names section.

I also created the disambiguation page for Dioscorea opposita, and removed all links pointing to that page. I added a disambiguation heading to Dioscorea oppositifolia in an attempt to catch any confused readers. The disambiguation page is entirely necessary because of the tremendous number of sources refering to the Chinese yam as Dioscorea opposita.

If the community builds consensus that this page would be best suited under the scientific name [Dioscorea polystachya], we can move it back at that time. --MCEllis (talk) 19:36, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I think you're right to do so. Sources are hopelessly confused about which botanical names go with which common names. Part of this is because the Chinese characters sometimes used in Chinese for this species (山薯) mean "mountain yam", while the Japanese equivalent (山芋- literally "mountain yam", "mountain potato" or even "mountain taro") are used in Japanese for Dioscorea japonica, and part of this is because many authors don't know that yama(no)imo and nagaimo are different species, assuming that they're just varieties with different root shapes (nagaimo literally means "long yam"). Complicating things further, the Flora of China refers to yet another species, Dioscorea fordii as 山薯, which also means "mountain yam".
 * The only caveat is that the Flora of China has 69 species, subspecies and varieties of Dioscorea, including some that are better known in other parts of the world, and often with their own confusions. Still, in the strange, jumbled-up world of names for potatoes, yams and sweet potatoes, this may be about as close as you can get to clarity. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:57, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Yikes! I just came across a book that refers to Konjac as "Japanese mountain yam". As if we needed more confirmation that we're not in Kansas, anymore... Chuck Entz (talk) 23:16, 26 March 2016 (UTC)