Kūmara cultivar. Waīna. Yen. (1)
Māori names
Māori names
Description
Kūmara cultivar. Yen 503. European cultivar, pre-1900. Red skinned, yellow fleshed cultivar sent to Japan by Dr. Yen in 1966 for safe keeping. Returned 19 November 1988.
From Yen 1963: 37-38: Collected from the East Coast, Bay of Plenty, Waikato, West Coast, Northland, Taranaki. Commercial gardens throughout the Auckland province. Spanish type (Red Spanish and Bermuda sections) under classification system devised by Thompson 1922 and 1949.
Detailed description in Yen. The root colours vary considerably. The Māori place this as one variety, but 5 root forms have been separated into commercial varieties as follows: 1) Owairaka Red. Collected as Parakipere (Blackberry) in Kennedy Bay, Coromandel and Waimehana Bay, Northland. 2) Tauranga Red 3) Gisborne Red 4) Owairaka Pink 5) New Zealand Pink Descriptions are in separate records.
All are sweet on cooking, with dry texture. The purple forms are said to be sweeter. Storage abilities of all are fair. These "varieties" can all yield very large edible roots; some up to 8lb recorded at Otahuhu experimental garden. The varieties may be derived from vegetative mutation.
Yen states that the Māori were aware of the plant instability and "the naming of variants appeared to be in progress prior to the breakup of the agricultural system" (ibid: 39)
