Dioscorea prainiana (PROSEA)

Plant Resources of South-East Asia Introduction

List of species

Dioscorea prainiana R. Knuth

Family: Dioscoreaceae

Dioscorea deflexa Hook.f., non Grisebach, D. maliliensis R. Knuth.

• Malaysia: ubi kelonak, kelunoh, kelana.

Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, north-eastern Sumatra, central Sulawesi.

Tubers are used for food in Peninsular Malaysia, boiled or roasted. If not adequately cooked they taste bitter. In traditional ceremonial practices, tuber juice is dropped onto the mouth of new-borns to open the mouth.

Perennial, dioecious herb with unarmed stem up to 16 m long, twining to the right. Tuber 1, subglobose, up to 30 cm long, 15 cm in diameter, at the end of a stalk in the soil up to 30 cm long, with yellow flesh, weighing up to 20 kg. Bulbils absent. Leaves simple, herbaceous, alternate on thin stems, opposite on thicker stems; petiole up to 6 cm long, less than half the length of the blade; blade ovate-elliptical, up to 15 cm × 7 cm. Male flowering axes together on decurved leafless branches up to 60 cm long, up to 8 cm long with more than 60 flowers each. Female flowering axes up to 50 cm long. Capsule relatively large, the wings up to 25 mm × 30 mm. It occurs up to about 500 m altitude.

13, 22.

L.E. Groen, J.S. Siemonsma & P.C.M. Jansen