Rooting Around

By Melissa August, Matthew Cooper, Wendy Cole, Ellin Martens, Desa Philadelphia, Julie Rawe, Alain Sanders, Flora Tartakovsky and Josh Tyrangiel

BUT ALL IS QUIET AMONG RUTABAGAS Recently, Rhode Island named Mr. Potato Head its official travel ambassador and began planting six-foot statues of him across the state. But that's not the only breaking tuber story:

--British gynecologists are launching a clinical trial on the effects of progesterone extracted from Mexican wild yams on women with PMS

--U.S. scientists last month used 150-year-old Irish potato leaves to replicate the DNA of the fungus that brought on the Great Potato Famine

--Nigerian police are investigating reports that a schoolboy was turned into a yam through witchcraft