The Common Potato
A member of a poisonous plant family, domesticated by Native Americans at 15,000 feet above sea level thousands of years ago, a source of power for the Inca Empire, a future survival food, implicated in the Irish Famine, and a source of modern day food poisoning—the common spud has an interesting story to tell.
My earliest memories of the common spud or potato go back many years, during more trying economic times, when food and money were scarce. As a young boy, I accompanied my grandfather to our neighbor’s 200 acre potato farm. The flat corrugated field we trudged out onto that afternoon had been dug up by a potato harvester early that day. The turned, soft, loamy soil stuck to our boots and made walking difficult for an old man and a small boy. Grandpa assured me that the prime Katahdin variety spuds were gone, but many good, “small potatoes” were left under the soil by the machinery. As we walked out toward the center of the field we met many of our neighbors who were also there to “glean” the fresh and (free) small potatoes left behind by the mechanical potato harvester. We all carried a “potato fork” which resembled a small clam rake, and a gunny sack. I was directed to “Fill the sack”. Each one of us dug in the deep brown loamy soil with the fork, scraping until the tines bumped into something dense that didn’t sound or feel like a rock. The rake was tipped up, and back, to trap a misshapen muddy lump which, with a little shake, revealed the pale brown skin of the common potato my mom kept in a basket in our pantry. That day the rich brown earth gave up a lovely hoard of nice potatoes that I proudly placed in my gunny sack.
I didn’t know then that the common potato has a scientific name:” Solanum tuberosum, nor did I know its fascinating history. The potato is an immigrant species to North America, like most of us. The potato grows wild in South America. This native New World plant, is a member of the infamous Nightshade Family (Solanacea). The Nightshades include common, healthful vegetables (and fruits) such as tomatoes, potatoes, and aubergines, but also known poisonous plants, such as “deadly nightshade” (Belladonna), Datura (Jimsonweed) and others.
I was also unaware of the long history of this plant, which was domesticated perhaps 8,000-10,000 years ago in the high plains of modern-day Peru and Bolivia. Though no actual physical evidences of the plant itself survived from these earliest times, ceramic objects created by native Americans of that period are preserved in the archaeological record. In native ceramics the potato is represented in pottery, or is used as a design influence. These “potato” artifacts were recovered from the very early times noted above. However, actual dried or frozen tubers preserved in a dry state were recovered in Peru’s high plateau and C14 dated to about 2,500BC or @ 4,500 years ago. So people have been digging and eating potatoes for a long, long time.
Potatoes were first effectively cultivated in the high plateau region or “Altiplano” of Peru, Bolivia and parts of Chile where the high altitude (@ 15,000 feet) and low temperatures precluded growing the more common corn or maize crop—the staple of other SA regions. When people occupied the Altiplano, it was the hardy potato which became their staple food and the principal source of food energy for these indigenous peoples of the high plains. Their isolation in the remote highlands, their morphological and physiological adaptations to high altitude living and their domestication of the Llama and the potato provided them with advantages over other tribes and eventually led to the development of the great Inca Empire, perhaps the most extensive and advanced culture in pre-Columbian America.
Beginning in the 13th century AD the Inca Empire, the largest in pre-Columbian America, stretched along the west coast of South America among the Andes mountain chain from modern-day Ecuador to southern Chile. The Inca were master managers and organizers who built a huge empire with monumental architecture, a Roman-like, nation-girding road system, beautiful stonework, fine textiles. The rise of the Inca Empire is claimed to been made possible as a result of the domestication of the potato and the wild llama (the latter used as a food source and pack animal). The Inca Empire reached its greatest development in 1438 and occupied the Altiplano until finally defeated by the Spanish in 1572. The Inca boiled, mashed, baked, and stewed their potatoes much as we do today. They also made a potato starch which may have been used as an ingredient in stews or soups. But the most important inovation was the development of “chuno” a freeze dried potato.
Potatoes were the most important food and cash crop of these high altitude Andean peoples. But more significantly the Inca may have developed a form of low weight, freeze dried potatoes known as “chuno” (accent over the “n” or “chun-yo”) that provided the food energy source which supported and sustained their rise and expansion as a powerful South American empire. Chuno is made from potatoes by repeated freezing and thawing the tuber to break down cell structure and release fluids, then left in the open to sun-dry the potatoes. The resultant shrunken, dehydrated tuber could be easily packed and transported (typically by llama) and safely stored for years. Chuno was rehydrated into a nutritious food by simple soaking and then boiling. Inca soldiers carried light and compact chuno as marching rations. Stores of these freeze dried, light weight potatoes were used as emergency food sources during periods when harvests were poor or during crises such as conflict or war. After the defeat of the Inca, the Spanish used chuno as a food for the enslaved Inca miners who worked the Spanish silver mines of the16th and 17th centuries.
In common use in the Spanish colonies of the Americas, the potato was soon introduced to Europe in the 16th century by the Spanish. The first formal evidence of the widespread use of this American food crop occurs as a 1567 parchment receipt for delivery of a load of potatoes from the city of Las Palmas on Gran Canaria ( Canary Islands) to Antwerp in Belgium. Soon after, potatoes appear in the British Isles in the late 1580s. By the 19th century, this crop had widely replaced other root crops in Europe such as turnips and rutabaga. This native American tuber had major advantages. It was easy to grow. It thrives in diverse soil types and produced a high level of caloric return relative to the physical effort required to plant and harvest the crop. Fresh dug potatoes, when kept cool and in the dark, stored well and for long periods. The potato provided a good source of carbohydrate and protein. The easily digested starch satisfied hunger quickly and effectively. As a result, in a short period the potato became a staple crop around the world.
In modern times the potato is a the dominant staple food crop in most of eastern and central parts of Europe. In Russia, (and other Central European nations) potatoes are used to make Vodka, a very popular alcholic drink. Potato was famously, the 19th century staple crop of Ireland—and is to this day. In Ireland potatoes often appear in more than one delicious form on an Irish dinner plate.
The potato plant produces flowers of varying colors. The central stamen part is generally yellow and a characteristic of the Nightshade family. After pollination, the plant bears small green fruit which contain several hundred tiny seeds. It also has another form of reproduction. The potato plant produces upright stems from which compound leaves with seven leaflets are produced. The plant grows to about two feet (24 in) in height when it flowers. During maturation some plant stems at the soil level grow downward and spread radially under soil surface. It is upon these underground stems (or “stolons”) that swellings form to produce a food storage organ or underground “tuber”. Tubers are thus not part of the “root” system but are modified plant stems. Tubers are rich in protein and carbohydrates which store food for a new plant (a clone) growing in the following season. Each tuber has several nodes or “eyes” from which each new plant may grow.
Potatoes are an excellent survival food. A medium potato 180 g (6 oz) has essentially zero fat content, is low in Sodium (17 mg sodium), has 37 g of carbohydrate, 4g of fiber, 3g of sugars, and provides 4g of protein. It is a rich source of Potassium providing about 1/5 of Potassium nutritional requirements.
The potato has nutritionally acceptable amounts of both carbohydrates and protein. Its high starch content is readily digested into sugars which quickly satisfies hunger, and with the addition of small amounts of other diverse food sources a healthful diet may be readily achieved. For this reason the UN has promoted the growing of potatoes as one way to help alleviate world hunger.
The cultivation of potatoes is relatively simple. Even a small plot of moderately fertile soil can produce a crop of edible nutritious food stuff with very little effort. Typically in early Spring, stored potatoes which during storage produce small white sprouts at each node on the tuber are cut up into ‘seed potatoes” of about an inch square each one with at least one node. These are planted in rows in a well drained loamy or loam sand soil. After several weeks the potato plant had emerged and produced flowers. The plants grow vigorously, sometimes attracting the Colorado Striped Potato Beetle which produces larvae which damage the plant. At this stage the growing subsurface tubers may swell to the point at which they throw off soil cover and become exposed to sunlight at the surface.
Potatoes readily turn green when exposed to sunlight. The green skins contain a toxic poison called solanine. Potatoes produce solanine in the skins, stems and leaves as a natural defense against insect infestation. Solanine is a glycoalkaloid, a nerve toxin which when ingested undergoes changes which may interfere with neuromuscular process, eventually inhibiting further attack on the potato plant. It is also poisonous to humans, causing digestive gastirc distress, headache even convulsions and coma.
On the farm, at this stage of growth, farmers often plow another furrow alongside of the planted furrow to control weeds, but more importantly to bury any tubers which had become exposed by the growing and swelling potatoes. Green-skinned potatoes contain poisonous solanine and are not salable. After harvest the crop is quickly moved to a potato barn…a cool, dark storage barn for potatoes. Our neighbor, Ben Hallock did not have a potato barn so he was forced to sell his crop soon after harvest. The neighboring Penny family had a 50 by 80 foot long potato barn. The elongate, part buried-structure appeared to me, as a buried house roof sitting on the brow of a low hill. Inside, it was dark and cool. A massive hill of potatoes filled the back half of the bbarn. In this cool dark place the Penny harvest was stored for a few months or sometimes longer. Harold Penny waited until the wholesale price for prime Katadins went up just before Christmas to sell his harvest at a “good” price.
Ireland of 1845 was hit with Potato Blight when a fungus or mold known as: Phytophythora infestans attacked the Irish “Lumper” potato. The Irish Potato famine of the following years beginning about 1847 was not the fault of the Irish or the potato. The “Lumper” was introduced to Irish farmers from England, by English landlords as a good food-crop for the landlord’s peasant Irish tenants. This single variety was brought to Ireland as a “potato seed” not actual botanical seeds like a cherry “pit” or peach pit. These “seed”potatoes are simply pieces of potato, each with a node or “eye”. Each eye will sprout a new plant. Thus the Lumper potato grown by the Irish was essentially a genetic clone—like one giant, but separated, potato plant—which was found all across Ireland. All Irish potatoes of that time were genetically identical. When P. Infestans attacked one or more Irish farms, these potatoes carried the tiny fungus spores on its skin. Some of each of that year’s crop was cut into potato “seed” and used to plant the following season. This type of agricultural system encouraged and sustained exacerbated the transmission of the disease to infect all Irish farms very rapidly. Then too, since all potatoes were genetic clones, there was little genetic resistance to the disease and Lumper potatoes all over Ireland shriveled up and died that year, and in several subsequent years. The result was famine, malnutrition, starvation disease and death.
In addition to this biological/genetic problem, there were others. English land owners owned all or most Irish farms and controlled production of other foods. English “Corn Laws” made grain crops and bread impossibly expensive to Irish farm familes. And finally, in pursuit of profits, land owners continued to export other food crops to England, while one million of their tenant, poor-Irish starved when their family potato crops failed. In the end, one million Irish died of starvation and 2 million Irish emigrated, many to the US.
Thankfully the Irish brought their love of potatoes with them and US agriculture and cuisine profited from the sad tragedy of Potato Famine in Ireland.
