the.com/potato
the humble starch that fueled empires, famines, and every late-night life decision
means A starchy edible tuber from the plant Solanum tuberosum, eaten boiled, fried, mashed, or roasted the world over.
from From Spanish 'patata,' itself a blend of the Taíno 'batata' (which actually meant the sweet potato) and the Quechua 'papa' (the Andean tuber we now call the potato). Spanish colonizers tangled the two names together when they brought the plant back from the Americas, and the confusion stuck — English borrowed 'potato' in the 16th century, first applying it to the sweet potato before the white tuber claimed the word for good.
- space pioneer
- first vegetable grown in space, 1995
- toxic cousin
- belongs to deadly nightshade family
- green warning
- green skin signals mildly poisonous solanine
- buoyancy test
- sinks in water unless rotten inside
- crowd feeder
- a single acre yields tons of food
irish potato famine — 1845-1852 starvation that killed ~1 million people in ireland
peru potato diversity — 7,000+ varieties cultivated in the andes, birthplace of the crop
idaho russet potato — most widely grown potato variety in the usa since the 1920s