Yams and similar vegetables are planted by men in August and September, near to the young tree stems up which they are to trail, and at distances apart of 2 or 3 yards.  In this case, however, there are two plantings.  In the first instance the yam tubers are planted in pretty deep holes, the tubers being long.  The yams then grow, and twine over the tree stems, and spread.  After about ten months the men dig up the tubers, which in the meantime have grown larger, and cut away from them all the trailing green growth, and then hang the tubers up in the houses and emone, to let the new growing points sprout.  Then in about another two months the men replant the smaller tubers, while the larger ones are retained for food.

There are two curious Mafulu practices in connection with yam-planting.  First, before planting each tuber they wrap round it an ornamental leaf, such as a croton, which they call the “sweetheart of the yam.”  Against this leaf they press a piece of limestone.  They then plant the tuber with its sweetheart leaf around it and the piece of limestone pressing against its side, and fill in the soil; but as they do the latter they withdraw the piece of limestone, which they use successively for other yams, and, indeed, keep in their houses for use year by year.  In the villages near the Mafulu Mission Station the limestone used is generally a piece of stalactite, which they get from the limestone caves in the mountains.  The belief is that by planting in this way the yams will grow stronger and better.  Secondly, there is a little small-leafed plant of a spreading nature, only a few inches high, which grows wild in the mountains, but which is also cultivated, and a patch of which they always plant in a yam plantation.  This plant they also call the “sweetheart of the yam”; and they believe that its presence is beneficial to the plantation.

Yams are ready for supplying food eight or ten months after planting.  They are not, like the potatoes, dug up from day to day, as they can be stored.  The usual period of digging and storing is about June or July, and this digging is done by both men and women, the former dealing with the larger yams, which are difficult to get up, and the latter with the smaller ones.

The yam is apparently regarded by the Mafulu people as a vegetable possessing an importance which one is tempted to think may have a more or less superstitious origin-witness the facts that only men may plant it and that it is the only vegetable in the planting of which superstitious methods are employed, and the special methods and ceremonies adopted in the hanging of the yams at the big feast.  But I fancy this idea as to the yam is not confined to the Mafulu; and indeed Chalmers tells us of a Motu superstition which attributes to it a human origin; [88] and a perusal of the chapter on sacrifices in Dr. Codrington’s book, The Melanesians, leaves the impression on one’s mind that among these people the yam is the one vegetable which is specially used for sacrificial purposes.