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Daily Bucket: The Air Potato Beetles Are Doing Their Job [1]
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Date: 2025-09-03
The Daily Bucket is a regular series from the Backyard Science group. Here we talk about Mother Nature in all her glory, especially the parts that live nearby. So let us know (as close as you are comfortable) where you are and what's going on around you. What's the weather like? Seen any interesting plants, bugs or critters? Are there birds at your feeders? Deer, foxes or snakies in your yard? Seen any cool rocks or geological features? Post your observations and notes here. And photos. We like photos. :)
The Air Potato is a stout vine in the Yam family with large heart-shaped leaves. The name comes from the odd aerial tubers that develop at the leaf junctures: these look somewhat like a small potato, ranging from marble-sized to tennis-ball size. They are known technically as bulbils. As the vine dies in winter, the aerial bulbils drop to the ground; since they are light and round, they are easily carried along by flowing water from a hard rain and deposited elsewhere. Each "air potato" is capable of growing a new vine, and a single plant produces dozens of them.
It is not known exactly how the plant was first introduced to the United States. The most likely scenario is that it came in the late 18th century along with the African slave trade. The first recorded description of the Air Potato in the US was in 1777, in a garden in Mobile, Alabama.
The first definitively-known introduction in Florida came in 1905, when a few specimens were obtained by horticulturalist Henry Nehrling, who was active in the plant nursery trade near Orlando and probably sold them as ornamentals. Nehring also sent a few plants to the US Department of Agriculture and asked them to evaluate the Air Potato's usefulness as a commercial food crop. The USDA concluded that it wasn't edible, but also noted that the plant's rapid growth and ease of propagation made it a potentially dangerous invasive. But they did not ask Nehring to destroy his plants or stop selling them. They became popular in the garden trade.
By 1993, the Air Potato had escaped numerous Florida gardens and invaded the wild, where, without any natural enemies, it quickly overgrew the native trees and shrubs, shaded them out, and killed them. The invasive yams were found in 23 Florida counties, as well as parts of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. The plant was outlawed, but by 2006 the vine had infested an estimated 25% of Florida.
In desperation, Florida officials turned to biological warfare. Once the Florida Air Potatoes were identified genetically as Chinese varieties of an African species, the search began for some sort of biological control from its native area that would attack the vines without touching any of Florida's native vegetation. After years of research and testing, a suitable candidate was found: the Air Potato Leaf Beetle (Lilioceris cheni). These are small Chinese beetles that look sort of like Ladybugs without the black spots. Both the adult beetles and the larvae feed exclusively on the leaves of the Air Potato vine. After several years of testing in special quarantine zones to confirm that the beetles did not attack any native Florida species (including our own native yam species), the first large-scale releases of the beetles were done in the Miami-Dade area in 2011. Since then, beetles have been released all over Florida, including the Tampa Bay area.
The beetles do not usually kill the vine, but they destroy enough of the leaf surface area that the plant has to divert all of its energy to photosynthesis just to stay alive, and is unable to form "potatoes" to reproduce. This helps control the plants by preventing new vines from sprouting.
The beetles seem to be doing their job ...
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