You had me at browniesš I will def. try that
I have never heard of sweet potato flour, at least not using the roots themselves. You can make a powder from dried leaves and use it as a thickener in stews and the like. It actually works pretty well but it takes quite a bit of it, more than wheat flour and it burns easily. It makes a nice very roux with butter, or beef or chicken fat or best yet turkey fat. Add it just a tiny bit a time to the hot fat or itās hard to keep it from being lumpy. It makes your dish a darker color, especially the dark purple leaves but it still tastes good.
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What a great idea! And way to use some of all that nutritious greenery.
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Interesting that the Japanese beetles prefer purple sweet potato leaves. Iāve noticed that with the pole beans Iām trialing; the purple-stemmed varieties are much more attractive to the beetles, which is too bad, because they seemed to germinate and grow much quicker in the spring. But the green varieties later surpassed them due to the level of beetle damage.
I wonder what it is about the purple plants that attract them. I wonder if it holds true for other kinds of plants? I wonder if the purple color and the attractiveness to beetles can be genetically uncoupled, or if they are one and the same thing.
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I know this is not the same as what you described, but have you heard of the Manihi āTreasure Islandā sweet potato? Its leaves are close to black in color, and I donāt think itās patented.
Also, there is the Flora Mia Black sweet potato vine. It looks a little closer to your description, but it may be patented.
Jerry Irving
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I think it makes sense that the ones that show the recessive traits are less hardy. If I understand correctly then sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) are 6x ploidy. You have to narrow the gene pool more and more, the more the ploidy is, to get successive matches for the same recessive gene. Each time the population gets more homogeneous. But we donāt know what genes are being lost.
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I think your sweet potato project is really one of the most valuable things going on in the GtS world! I hope that one day I will be able to build on what youāve done to breed sweet potatoes for Colorado.
Guess what?! One of my sweet potatoes has been flowering every day for a month, and itās had immature seed pods on it for awhile, and I checked it today, and . . . the first seed pod was ready for harvesting!
I pulled it off and found there were eight nice black seeds inside. My very own true sweet potato seeds. And there was only one plant in that area, and itās the only sweet potato I know of in my whole neighborhood that has flowered this year, so it must be self-fertile.
I popped those seeds into the soil all over my greenhouse immediately. Iām gonna try to breed my population to become a year-round perennial groundcover in my greenhouse, with roots I can harvest whenever the whim strikes. 
'Cause why not?
Thank you so much for inspiring me to want to try, @MarkReed! Your project made me really excited about the idea.
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@Lowell_McCampbell, I think I got the sweet potato slips from you. Do you grow any other morning glory species?
@MarkReed, Iāll describe the plant, and you can tell me if it sounds like a sweet potato. I hope so. Now youāve gotten me very curious.
There were four chambers inside the capsule, and each contained two seeds. The capsules and seeds looked the same as bindweed capsules and seeds, just significantly larger.
The flowers are dark purple, and the leaves are heart-shaped and medium green. Itās been putting out a new flower every day for about two months, sometimes two, three, or even four flowers in one day. Not all of those flowers have set seed pods, but about half of them have. Itās clearly self-fertile, since there are no other flowering morning glories in my neighborhood (except for bindweed).
If more of those capsules fully ripen, I can report back about how many seeds the rest have. If the rest all have four or fewer, we can guess it was a mutation in that specific flower. If the rest have more than four, it has to be genetic: maybe I have the wrong species? Or maybe this particular cultivar of sweet potato is unusually productive at making seeds? Obviously, I would prefer the latter. 
I can also report back about the shape of the cotyledons of the seedlings, if that seems like it would be relevant. Sweet potato cotyledons are supposed to look like > <, right? Would that also be true of any inedible lookalike species I should be aware of?
A possibility that occurs to me is that maybe drought has flipped something epigenetic. Does that seem possible? I watered it well in May, June, July, and August (a nice thorough drenching about three times a week), but during September, Iāve barely watered it at all. The plant has continued to do fine despite that, which I think I should probably credit to whatever fungus has taken over the deep wood chip mulch around it and grown loads of mycelia through it.
I will note that it hasnāt grown very vigorously ā the vineās only about four feet long, and it stopped making new leaves entirely after I stopped watering it regularly. But it has kept on flowering daily for about two months, and the leaves are still green.
(My suspicion is that it wonāt give me much in the way of roots to eat this fall, but thatās no big deal ā Iām planning to dig it up and move it into my greenhouse right before the first frost to see how it does in moist soil above freezing all winter.)
Wow, odd numbers of cotyledons is interesting! Does that seem to confer an advantage to the seedlings? I wouldnāt be surprised if having more leaf area to start photosynthesizing younger in life would be a good thing.
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Which Ipomoea species have you seen seed capsules for? My experience right now is limited to one (Ipomoea batatas, I hope ). Iāve also seen seed capsules for field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis), but thatās not Ipomoea.
My kang kong (Ipomoea aquatica) hasnāt made seeds yet, and I havenāt started bush morning glory (Ipomoea leptophylla) or mecha-meck (Ipomoea pandurata) yet, though I have seeds and plan to. There are a half-dozen other edible Ipomoea species Iām casually considering trying at some point. (I can make a list, if youāre curious.) Iām really interested in Ipomoea costata, but I havenāt seen anywhere in the US that sells seeds of it yet.
(Laugh.) Yes, I can see how sweet potato breeding would often produce weird offspring! Itās a shame most of those weirdnesses result in plants that do poorly, but thatās how mutation and wide crosses usually go.
I keep wondering if Ipomoea batatas is actually a species complex, rather than a single species.
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Ipomoea is certainly an intriguing genus!
I got intrigued by Ipomoea leptophylla and Ipomoea pandurata after reading about them in Sam Thayerās Field Guide of Edible Wild Plants. Although his description of the latter, that it ātends to excite the imagination more than the palate,ā is certainly a bucket of water on early excitement. (Laugh.) Still, Iād like to give them a try. It sounds like the roots can be pretty good when theyāre small, and Iām wild about the idea of highly drought tolerant vegetables.
These are the two most interesting articles Iāve found online about edible morning glories (which Iām sure youāve already read):
http://www.nomadseed.com/2017/12/mecha-meck-the-wild-sweet-potato-vine-ipomoea-pandurata/
The other species Iām currently interested in are Ipomoea costata, Ipomoea simplex, Ipomoea alba, Ipomoea tuba, Ipomoea macrantha, Ipomoea plummerae, Ipomoea lacunosa, and Ipomoea macrorhiza. There are a heck of a lot more Ipomoea species out there that seem to be easy to find seeds of because theyāre popular ornamentals, but I canāt find any information about the edibility of those species, so āEh!ā My fascination with botany tends to wander away whenever the plants are inedible. (Laugh.)
Iām particularly interested in Ipomoea costata because itās native to an arid climate, and it sounds like it has been a popular food for indigenous people in Australia. That implies the roots taste good, and can get big with little water. That would be a really cool plant. (If somebody out there has tasted it, Iād love to hear your opinion. )
Wow, Ipomoea batatas does seem to have some crazy things in its history! It would be fun if researchers can figure out what species likely crossed to create that species (complex?). Backcrossing Ipomoea batatas with some of its wild ancestors could result in new traits to play with, some of which might be desirable.
Whatever species Ipomoea batatas arose from must have been native to northern South America. Do we know which other edible Ipomoea species are native to that general region?
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One possibility is that you accidentally duplicated the natural growing conditions. Some areas do narurally have summer rains and fall drought. If that is the case you may have accidentally triggered the natural seed mechanism for the plant, resulting in a full seed load.