If it's bare and dead it should be fine. I trim dying vines but I don't like to mess with new growth. None of my guys have gone dormant either.

Why do you think it is wasting energy on a dying vine? It could be absorbing useful things from the old vine. Unless the old vine is completely dead I wouldn't cut it off.

I’ll prune it tomorrow. You can totally tell the old vine is dying because it’s turning yellow and drying out. I’m hoping it’ll stimulate more growth.

You know what’s interesting the new leaves on the new vine are thicker and darker green. They’re not so fragile looking like the leaves that grew on the first couple vines. The older leaves were lighter and thinner.

I need to build a tipi trellis for this guy because it’s growing like crazy. I took this pic a couple days ago and I swear the vine has grown another inch. I really want to unearth the caudex, but I won’t, bet it has grown a ton.

Thank you;).

Do you ever prune your Dioscorea elephantipes Poly? I’m curious if pruning this type of plant is the norm or do most people leave it alone.

I think I’ve had mine for 3 years now...? The vine last year grew a little but not nearly as much as I thought it would. Like less than a foot but it lasted a long time before the leaves finally turned yellow and dropped off and the vine dried up. I trimmed it at that time. I was ok with the length of the vine figuring that as long as the leaves were alive the caudex was growing.

This year the vine is much longer & sturdier and the leaves larger. It just seems heartier in general. It was growing pretty fast but seems to have suddenly slowed down. I’m watching to see if maybe it’s going to push out another vine...?

So far I’ve only moved some of the top dressing aside to peak at the shoulders of the caudex but have resisted the urge to do more. I can see it has grown quite a bit.

I leave almost all my Dioscoreas alone and only trim after the vine has dried up. All but one go dormant and that is when the vine is trimmed. One species has never gone dormant and this is the one I trim as the vines dry up.

Lift the caudex gradually as you repot each year. If you lift it too much or too early, it can be damaged by strong sunlight. I would start to lift after 3-4 years growing but not complete the exposure until some years later.

Thanks everybody for the advice. I think I took the pics from above on Friday and in the past couple days the old vine gets drier and drier. It’s pretty much spent. I didn’t get around cutting it off today, but I’m hopeful tomorrow will be the day;). I have tomorrow off because of the holiday and that will give me enough time to make a new trellis and take my time unraveling the new vine. Hopefully everything goes as planned;). It’s crazy how fast the vine is growing, I bet the caudex is getting nice and big;).

Tyler or Isde do you notice your little Dioscorea elephantipes unearthing their caudex little by little on its own?

HA! I like to think that I do, but I'm sure it's just my imagination. My thoughts were kind of leaning in that direction. That as the caudex grows it'll start "heaving" some of the top dressing aside and become visible on its own so that I won't have to keep moving it aside to peek. I do that about every 3-4 months when I can no longer resist the urge and I have to know what's going on down there. I really only brush aside maybe 8-10 pieces of gravel so I can see that it's still there and not all dessicated and shriveled.

I haven't completely unpotted since several months before it started growing this time last year so it's probably been a good 14-16 months since I've seen the entire caudex. I'm thinking that once the vine dies and it goes dormant again next Summer might be a good time to unpot, change the medium and raise just a bit. I think it was a year old when I got it. I'll have to check the email I got from Arid Lands to know for sure. Pretty sure it's at least 3 years old by now.

I have a couple that seem to be, but it could also be because they're in shallow pots.....or my imagination as well.