The Story of Potato

Solanum tuberosum: the edible part is a tuber — a modified stem — not a swollen root. Green tubers can carry toxic solanine; UC pages say discard them.

How it was found

Kew maps Solanum tuberosum from western and southern South America to northwestern Venezuela. Native list: Argentina Northwest and South, Bolivia, Chile Central, North and South, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela. Introduced into parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. USDA GRIN: widely cultivated; landraces listed for the Canary Islands, India, Mexico, Central America, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. UC Marin / Tahoe UCCE / Placer-Nevada MG: native to the Andes of South America.

Tahoe Basin UCCE MG: cultivation by indigenous peoples goes back perhaps 10,000 years; European “discovery” first recorded in 1536 by conquistadores who found tubers in markets throughout the Incan Empire. Placer/Nevada UCCE MG: a native of the Andes, carried by Spaniards into Europe during the 16th century. Kew prints a South American native range, not a first-cultivation year. Riverside Just Fun Facts dates and a Yolo page that cites Charles C. Mann are not used as dated domestication consensus.

How people used it

Kew lists food (also animal food). Placer/Nevada MG: one of the world’s main food crops; edible portion is a tuber (modified stem); major source of starch, amino acids, protein, vitamin C, and B vitamins. Tahoe UCCE MG: chuño freeze-dried potato storage used by Andean peoples since before 1000 AD.

Kew lists medicine and poison with no named folk remedy. GRIN folklore is not copied. UC Marin MG: discard green potatoes, which contain a high level of toxic alkaloid solanine; exclude light in storage to prevent greening. Yolo UCCE Savvy Sage and El Dorado Master Food Preservers print the same safety point (solanine / glycoalkaloids). That is storage safety, not a historical medicine recipe.

Timeline

1. Perhaps 10,000 years / before 1000 AD (Andean, as printed)

   Andes, chuño

   Tahoe Basin UCCE MG: potatoes native to South America’s Andes; cultivation by indigenous peoples perhaps 10,000 years; chuño freeze-drying used by Andean peoples since before 1000 AD. Kew’s map is the Andes too. The freeze-dried store is how a highland tuber became year-round food.

   Tahoe Basin UCCE MG — Potatoes workshop

2. 1536 / 16th century

   Into Europe with the Spaniards

   Tahoe UCCE MG: European “discovery” first recorded in 1536 by conquistadores in Incan Empire markets. Placer/Nevada MG: Spaniards carried the potato into Europe during the 16th century.

   Tahoe UCCE MG; UCCE Placer/Nevada

3. 17th century (Ireland, as printed)

   Ireland’s major food crop — routes not collapsed

   Placer/Nevada UCCE MG: a century after the 16th-century introduction to Europe, the potato had become the major food crop in Ireland. Tahoe UCCE MG: Basque fishermen and/or secondary English introductions (Raleigh or Drake working for Raleigh) possibly brought it to Ireland — those routes are not collapsed into one.

   UCCE Placer/Nevada; Tahoe UCCE MG

4. 1621 / 1719 (English colonies, as printed)

   Bermuda boxes, then New Hampshire

   Tahoe Basin UCCE MG: first reports in the English colonies were a few boxes sent from the Governor of Bermuda to the Governor of Virginia in 1621; first potato crops planted in New Hampshire in 1719.

   Tahoe Basin UCCE MG

5. 1753

   Named in Species Plantarum

   Kew accepts Solanum tuberosum L., first published in Sp. Pl.: 185 (1753). USDA GRIN: Sp. pl. 1:185. 1753.

   Kew POWO; USDA GRIN

6. 1845–1849 (mid-1800s)

   Late blight, famine

   Tahoe UCCE MG: 1845–49 (52) the vast majority of the Irish potato crop failed; cause printed as late blight, Phytophthora infestans; about 1 million starved and 2 million migrated by 1855. Placer/Nevada MG: fungal disease caused the Irish potato famine in the mid-1800s.

   Tahoe UCCE MG; UCCE Placer/Nevada

Cool to know

Growing notes for this plant live on the Plant Wiki. This page is origin and use, not a How-To.