who is on first? Confusion?

 The article's title promised to tell you how to grow potatoes.  Here's the photo they used to illustrate the article which compounded the confusion. OK all you sharp eyed plant people see the confusion right away because this is obviously a sweet potato, not a potato.  This is mostly a storage root but it is a stem at one end (as is obvious).  This is Ipomea batatas, a morning glory, and note the specific epithet, which sounds as if a young kid was saying "potatoes", a common name that got transferred to storage stem (a tuber) in the nightshade family Solanum tuberosum.  Both from Peru.  The common name got switched leading to much confusion.  And don't even think about bringing up the name yam.  The article was about the latter and did not mention sweet potatoes.  

Plantains - Common name & culinary confusion

There are times when the Phactor wonders if someone is putting me on with some the questions that people ask.  Here's what someone asks, "I've heard a lot about fried plantains, how good they are, and I'd like to try them."  "Since I have plenty in my lawn can you tell me how your prepare them."  It's highly unlikely that this email came from any place in the tropics.  So let me explain the problem.  Plantain is a common name for two (or more?) very different plants.  There's those broad-leafed lawn weeds in the genus Plantago, and then there's the starchy banana, plantanos.  When the latter is nicely ripe (really black skin), fried plantains are one of the joys of Latin American cuisine.  If the Phactor recalls rightly, the particular lawn weed in question is edible, and it might make a credible salad green or spinachy type vegetable, but forget about frying them.  So nowadays many big markets and Latino groceries have plantains which look like a big, angled bananas.  You usually buy them under ripe and then let them sit around until they ripen.  Then you peel them, cut them into convenient sized pieces, and fry them in butter until they begin to brown and carmelize a bit.  No idea how two such different plants got the same common name, but this seldom causes confusion because people who have plantains or plantains growing in their yards live quite a distance apart neither knowing or much caring about the other.  Maybe this is part of the wonder of the internet, and a good demonstration of why common names are so often problems.