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Worldwide Travels of the Potato
 BECOME A KITCHEN BOTANIST: Worldwide Travels of the Potato
The word potato comes from the Spanish patata, which is a mangled form of batata, which was the Taino word for the plant.
The potato originated in the Andes in South America and was taken to Europe in the early 16th century by the Spanish. It was subsequently brought to North America from Europe.
The potato also brought many people from Ireland to North America. This happened because the potato is enormously productive in temperate climates and is very nutritious. This made it very popular in Ireland where most people were poor and had little land. People could survive quite well on a small garden patch of potatoes. This remarkable food supply resulted in an increase in the population of Ireland, which reached 8 million in the mid 19th century.
But in 1845 disaster struck in the form of a devastating disease which quickly killed potato plants, by then the main food of the Irish people. This disease was caused by a fungus-like organism called Phytopthora infestans, and it resulted in about a million people dying from starvation. Another million people migrated to North America. If you have Irish ancestors who came here in the middle of the 19th century, they most likely came because of that plant pathogen.
Phytopthora is still a major problem in worldwide potato cultivation, but the Irish don’t have to worry. Today they have a much more robust economy and don’t have to live on spuds.
The potato is a basic part of the American diet and it is a member of a plant family called the Solanaceae, which includes a remarkable number of species important to our economy. These relatives of the potato include tomato, eggplant, sweet and hot peppers, and tobacco. Another family member, the deadly nightshade, is very poisonous as are non edible parts of the other species of the Solanaceae.
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