Around an unassuming brick house, in tidy beds and burgeoning pots, red-green cannas soar 10 feet to the sky; chartreuse sweet potato vines stretch to the sidewalk; and coleus is growing in so many colors and shapes, it might wake a dead Victorian.
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He plays " I'll Rise When the Rooster Crows " _ " This song is so country, " he says, " that you can smell the frost on the sweet potato vines " _ which he learned from a 1920s recording by the Dixie Clodhoppers.
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For this reason, sweet potato vine is ideal for use in home aquariums, trailing out of the water with its roots submerged, as its rapid growth is fueled by toxic ammonia and nitrates, a waste product of aquatic life, which it removes from the water.
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While Van Dyke talked about the life cycle of the taro plant and clarified the difference between hau ( a twisty-trunked tree with hibiscuslike flowers ) and koa ( a forest giant used to make canoes ), I admired a bed of black-leafed blue-flowering sweet potato vines ( one of the hundred varieties that grow in Hawaii ) wrapped around the feet of wauke trees and breadfruit saplings.
