Sweet Potato

This summer introduced or reminded me a couple of things related to the sweet potato or camote.

First, this plant we locally call tinangkong is a flowering vine. It bears conspicuous flowers. Albeit rarely, it yields sympetalous purple flowers that look just like those of its semiaquatic cousin, the tangkong or kangkong.

I think I've seen blossoming sweet potatoes many times before but it somehow still feels peculiar finding our backyard sweet potato garden in bloom. The flowers just seem out of place that I almost always feel the urge of trying to locate any nearby kangkong that might have shacked up with our sweet potatoes. It's comparable to the feeling I get when I am reminded of this fact: the camote or sweet potato tubers we buy from the market is the very same thing that grows underneath our sweet potato garden.

Also this summer, I found a group of insects I think I haven't seen in my entire life yet. The insects look like a cross between a cricket and grasshopper (photo below). They fly but are unable to sustain long-distance flight. They don't look "friendly." Many of them have made our tinangkong garden their home, hanging around the stems and petioles and chewing on a good amount of leaves we humans are supposed to be the ones consuming.

I tried holding one of them. The six-legged arthropod didn't bite but it spurted what I believe was fecal matter. I am still trying to learn about the identity of this group of insects. I am likewise in the process of deciding whether or not I should exterminate them with some insecticide or just let them go away naturally (if they ever will). Being mindful of the possible ecological consequences, I am cautious of annihilating a bunch of insects I am not well acquainted with. Well...admittedly, superstition also factors in.