Dioscorea villosaL.

wild yam

WFO wfo-0000396542 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Dioscorea villosa, photographed by Joseph McPhail
fig. a Joseph McPhail, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-08 / obs. 204454506
Dioscorea villosa, photographed by mefisher
fig. b mefisher, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203046903
Dioscorea villosa, photographed by Ben Smith
fig. c Ben Smith, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203037379
Dioscorea villosa, photographed by Emily Summerbell
fig. d Emily Summerbell, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202853150
Dioscorea villosa, photographed by Jess Miller-Camp
fig. e Jess Miller-Camp, CC0 1.0 / obs. 200334116
Dioscorea villosa, photographed by Harold Smith
fig. f Harold Smith, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200741696
Dioscorea villosa, photographed by Brian Finzel
fig. g Brian Finzel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 199879016
Dioscorea villosa, photographed by mefisher
fig. h mefisher, CC0 1.0 / obs. 199180745

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 203 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 203 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 31 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Dioscorea cliffortiana Lam.
  • Dioscorea glauca Muhl. ex L.C.Beck
  • Dioscorea hexaphylla Raf.
  • Dioscorea hirticaulis Bartlett
  • Dioscorea lloydiana E.H.L.Krause
  • Dioscorea longifolia Raf.
  • Dioscorea megaptera Raf.
  • Dioscorea paniculata Michx.
  • Dioscorea paniculata var. glabrifolia Bartlett
  • Dioscorea pruinosa Kunth
  • Dioscorea quaternata Walter
  • Dioscorea quaternata var. glauca (Muhl. ex L.C.Beck) Fernald
  • Dioscorea quinata J.F.Gmel.
  • Dioscorea quinata Walter
  • Dioscorea repanda Raf.
  • Dioscorea sativa L.
  • Dioscorea villosa f. glabrifolia (Bartlett) Fernald
  • Dioscorea villosa f. villosa
  • Dioscorea villosa subsp. glabrifolia (Bartlett) W.Stone
  • Dioscorea villosa subsp. glauca (Muhl. ex L.C.Beck) R.Knuth
  • Dioscorea villosa subsp. hirticaulis (Bartlett) R.Knuth
  • Dioscorea villosa subsp. paniculata (Michx.) R.Knuth
  • Dioscorea villosa subsp. quaternata (Walter) R.Knuth
  • Dioscorea villosa var. glabra J.Lloyd ex A.Gray

and 7 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.