Scientific name: Dioscorea villosa
Local name: wild yam, colic root, rheumatism root
Family: Dioscoreaceae
Status: European introduced
Descriptions:
Wild yam are a perennial types of climbers with slender rhizomes and pointed. It has heart-shaped-ovate leaves which 5- 10 cm in length. The color is light to medium green. Stems are little branched, leafy, grooved or narrowly winged, mostly hairless, lack tendrils and twine around other vegetation for support, and spreads by seed or branching rhizomes. It is consist of clusters of flowers arising from leaves axillary with male and female flowers on separate plants. Flowers of both are about 1/8 inch across, yellowish to greenish white, saucer-shaped with 6 petals. Male clusters are 1 to 12 inches long, usually forked or branched, the flowers with 6 short, yellow stamens and strung along the cluster stalk in groups of 1 to 3. Female clusters are 1 to 8 inches long and unbranched, the flowers single and spaced ¼ to ½ inch apart, each flower sitting at the tip of an ovary about 1/3 inch long with 3 broad wings.
The ovary expands to about 1 inch long as fruit develops, forming a broadly-winged, 3-sectioned capsule, each section containing 2 seeds, sometimes only 1. The capsule ripens from green to brown in fall.
Habitat:
Wild yam is native to most of the eastern half of the United States, but only reaches north as far as southern New England, including Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. This is a highly polymorphic species, showing variation in many characters across habitats, geography, and even within a single plant. However, this wild yam inhibited at floodplain, forests and wetlands margins.
Source: Most of Orang Asli Kanaq consumed wild yam as their main foods.
Medicinal uses:
This plants consists of huge medicinal benefits in pharmaceutical aspects. The common plant parts used are roots and rhizomes and chemical constituents that produce from these plants were tannin, foliate and potassium. These types of constituents essential in treating some diseases. For instances, it is internally used for arthritis and colitis where as has the ability to treats irritable bowel syndrome, diverticulitis and gastritis. Next, it is also helps in the treatment of gall bladder complaints. Then, it is helps in ovarian and labour pains and the most significant this wild yam is useful for managing menopause symptoms that influenced by women. The root parts of this wild yam has been used for many years to support women reproductive system health. It is because most of them believe, this wild yam act as precursors to human sex hormones ( Dalena et al., 2010) and this wild yam (roots) used as natural state since it does not contain estrogen or progesterone.
- Dalena Barton-Schuster, CH, Doula (2010). Wild Yam. Herb for reproductive system support in women.
Johor Ancient Wisdom 