Ipomoea simplex is a central and eastern Southern African grassland species of Convolvulaceae or Sweet Potato family, notable for its large tuber or root, often eaten raw by Xhosa and Sotho herd boys.

The Earl of Derby presented Kew Gardens with a "rounded uncouth-looking tuber" in 1844, having acquired it from the Eastern Cape, and all were completely unprepared for the beauty of its flowers that appeared in July 1845.

The following description is taken verbatim from the plant's appearance in Curtis's Botanical Magazine of 1846: Root a solitary tuber, larger than a good-sized apple, subglobose.

Stems from six inches to a foot long, slender, suberect, but feeble and scarcely able to support themselves, woody at the base and there more or less divided, glabrous, as is every part of the plant.

Stigma large, capitate, two-lobed, granulatedEdwin Percy Phillips in his survey of the Flora of the Leribe Plateau and environs in the Annals of the South African Museum notes that Ipomoea simplex grows in localities with sparse and uncertain rainfall, prone to fire in the dry season, harsh winter conditions, in the company of other plants with long taproots, thick tuberous roots and underground woody stems, all adaptations to the demands of their habitat.