A RARE variety of the world鈥檚 largest vegetable has been rediscovered in the
wild after 40 years. 女生小视频s feared that the elephant鈥檚 foot鈥攁 variety
of wild yam鈥攈ad become extinct in its only habitat, the Northern Cape
plateau of South Africa. Called elephant鈥檚 foot because of its huge edible tuber
that can weigh up to 300 kilograms, the yam was over-collected by botanists and
plant traders. But the sub-species of Dioscorea elephantipes was spotted by
botanists from the Millennium Seed Bank in Sussex during a seed-collecting
expedition to the plateau in February. Embarrassingly, says Paul Smith of the
seed bank, they had given up looking when a local shepherd guided them to a
patch of about a thousand plants.
Smith is keeping the location of the plants a secret to protect them from
illegal collectors.
