Chinese yam
species of plant
Dioscorea polystachya or Chinese yam (shānyào, simplified Chinese: 山药; traditional Chinese: 山藥), also called cinnamon-vine, is a species of flowering plant in the yam family. It is sometimes called Chinese potato or by its Korean name ma. It is also called huaishan in Mandarin and wàaih sāan in Cantonese.
It is a perennial climbing vine, native to East Asia. The edible tubers are cultivated largely in East Asia and sometimes used in alternative medicine. This species of yam is unique as the tubers can be eaten raw.
Range
This plant grows throughout East Asia. It is believed to have been introduced to Japan in the 17th century or earlier. Introduced to the United States as early as the 19th century for culinary and cultural uses, it is now considered an invasive plant species. The plant was introduced to Europe in the 19th century during the European Potato Failure, where cultivation continues to this day for the contemporary East Asian food market.
“Chinese yam” enters the record as species of plant. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Chinese, species and plant can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Chinese yam” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Chinese, species and plant provides the most credible route into that argument.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5279593. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chinese yam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.