Sweet potato
The sweet potato plant grows as a flowering vine with a large tuberous root. The root varies in color, ranging from white to orange to red to purple. Native to the historically tropical regions of the Americas, people spread it across the tropics during the Fourth World and continued to plant it further and further from the equator as the globe warmed. It rarely flowers, however, in places that get less than 11 hours of sunlight.
#Human usage
People of the Fifth World enjoy the sweet potato tuber cooked in a wide variety of different ways: roasted, mashed, fried, and often mixed with a sweetener (such as honey) for a dessert. People also enjoy the young leaves and shoots as a nutritious vegetable.
People in South America often use red sweet potatoes and lime juice to dye cloth.
#Specialization
A community that specializes in relationship with sweet potatoes will invariably tend towards horticulture, and therefore live in settled villages. Often these communities practice slash-and-burn agriculture, growing different guilds of plants at different stages and moving around the jungle in a regular cycle. They commonly grow sweet potatoes in traditional "banana circles" with banana, cassava, lemongrass, and taro.