The Collaborative International Dictionary
Batatas \Ba*ta"tas\, ||Batata \Ba*ta"ta\, n. An aboriginal American name for the sweet potato ( Ipom[ae]a batatas).
Wiktionary
n. (plural of batata English)
Usage examples of "batatas".
It was remarked that the natives subsisted mainly on roots of trees, and wild fruits such as batatas or oubis, with a little fish, and that they seemed to have some knowledge of gold when some lumps of the metal were shown them.
Those who support transfer from Polynesia point to the fact that they can find no evidence for the sweet potato on Rapa Nui before 1600 AD, but surely this is not entirely fair, given that ipomoea batatas does not preserve well in sediment.
But he most probably refers here to the Batatas, or sweet Potato, a Convolvulus, which was a popular esculent vegetable at that date, of tropical origin, and to which our Potato has since been thought to bear a resemblance.