Thursday, April 3, 2008

Edible Wild Plant: Mecha-Meck


Wild Potato Vine, or Mecha-Meck, or Man-of-the-Earth

This root weighed 15 pounds. It grows along roadsides and in open waste lands from Connecticut west to southern Ontario, Michigan, and Kansas, and south to Florida and Texas. Member of the morning-glory family and very close relative of the Sweet Potato.

From a lovely book by Oliver Perry Medsger, Edible Wild Plants (1939).
This one
looks a bit like a dog--reminds me of a pet a Jack Kirby monster might have.


2 comments:

Shawn Robare said...

Wow, that's an odd root. I wonder who was the first person to pick something like that up and think, "Man, I think I'm gonna take a bite out of this. I mean, I'm so hungry I could eat...this!"

Totally unrelaed, Mecha-Meck would be a cute name for a robot sidekick...

Rhizowen said...

I've just sowed some seeds of these and they're germinating. I look forward to eating them in due course and using them in my wacky root crop breeding project called Radix. Hardier sweet potatoes would be great. http://radix4roots.blogspot.com/