It is sometimes treated as separate species from Dioscorea cayenensis.

[1] Its wild progenitor is Dioscorea praehensilis[1] and possibly also D. abyssinica (by hybridization).

[4] Domestication occurred in West Africa, along the south-facing Atlantic coast.

rotundata is grown in West Africa, including countries such as Ivory Coast, Ghana and Nigeria.

[6] Blench (2006) reconstructs the tentative Proto-Niger-Congo (i.e., the most recent common ancestor of the Niger-Congo languages) root -ku for D.