Sweet potatoes, (Ipomoea batatas), are sweet-fleshed, pointy-ended starchy tubers in the Convolvulaceae family. Native to the New World, sweet potatoes traveled to the Old World before the potato. When the tuber we now call potato came on the scene, it was given the same name, and the sweet varieties began to be distinguished from them, rather than vice versa. Enforced SEM. Image width: 128 micrometers. Bar: 20 micrometers. Magnification: 780x if the image is printed 10 cm wide.