Are they either light green or deep purple-red? We have something like that here called "sweet potato vine" that is not actually related to sweet potatoes. It's an ornamental.

While the deer LOVE it, I don't think it's edible for humans. It certainly doesn't produce sweet potatoes.

My experience with it:
- fantastic in a pot as it cascades beautifully
- wilts in NC blazing hot sun, but claims on the tag "full sun"
- will take over a bed, the next bed over, the lawn, slow moving children if planted directly into the ground
- really REALLY fast growing ground cover that will kill anything in its shade including grass

Good luck!

Erin

Thank you so much Erin.

It actually will produce tubers, but they are not edible. At least I don't think they are.

The sweet potatoes that produce potatoes are called "slips." I've never seen them at a store around here, but you have to be a special kind of crazy to try to grow sweet potatoes in New Hampshire. (Like me!) If they are "sweet potato plants" and from a big box store, generally they are the lovely and bountiful decorative plant other posters have described. They are both "Ipomoea batatas" just to add to the confusion.

I'ts my first year trying to grow sweet potatoes (in containers, too) and I'm really hoping they do well. I wouldn't mind a mess of lovely greenery as well as tubers. I ordered my slips from a company in more normal sweet potato country.

It is getting a bit late for sweet potatoes but Home Depot and others sometimes have plants. If they are sweet potato plants they will have a variety name. Home Depot typically carries Bonnie plants, if so they will be the variety Beauregard.

I planted 9 edible sweet potato pie vines from Home Depot in a 4x4 raised bed last year and though they spread like crazy they produced pretty well.

It's a bit late to grow your own slips, but it is really easy to do. I never buy plants. Instead, in early Spring I put a sweet potato in a glass of water, so about half of it is submerged. In a couple of days you will see roots begin to grow in the water. In a week or two, shoots should start sprouting from the upper half. When the shoots are four or five inches long, snap them off and place them in another glass of water. The shoots (or slips) will grow roots and leaves. These are your baby sweet potato plants. One large sweet potato will produce dozens of slips. The trick is to find a sweet potato that has not been treated with a chemical that inhibits sprouting. Your best bet is an organic sweet potato, or one you've grown yourself. This Spring I used a very large, rather gnarly sweet potato from last Summers harvest that had already begun to sprout. I got at least two dozen slips from it, and it is still producing!