CORNELL UNIVERSITY EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETINS. 331 



THE WILD POTATO OF THE MEXICAN REGION. 



About 1678 Dr. W. J. Beal of the Michigan Agricultural College 

 received from the Harvard botanic gardens a few tubers, — the largest about 

 an inch in diameter — of a wild potato from Mexico. This potato has been 

 grown since that time at the Michigan college, and we have grown it here 

 two or three years, from the Michigan seed. The tubers are gradually 

 improving, and in 1887, when I made a report upon this potato,* the best 

 tubers measured three inches in length. The largest tubers now reach 

 over four inches in length, and the number of small potatoes in the hills 

 seems to be lessening. The illustration shows an average sample of this 

 potato as dug in our gardens this year. The tubers are brown, with deep 

 eyes, and tend to be flattened. They keep well. The flesh is very yellow. 

 When cooked, the flavor is rich and possesses a slight aroma which is not 

 present in the common potatoes. The plants usually produce balls freely. 



Mexican Wilci Potato. 



This potato is, probably, the Solanum tuberosum var. boreale of Gray, 

 although it has the interposed small leaflets which that plant is supposed 

 to lack. It occurs in a wild state from the Montezuma valley, Colorado, to 

 New Mexico southward in the mountains in Mexico. This wild potato of 

 the north appears to have been first brought to notice in 1856 by Dr. A. J. 

 MyeRvS of the United States army, who found it in westerm Texas. He 

 sent specimens to Asa Gray, who named it Solanum Fendleri, in honor of 

 Augustus Fendler, an early botanical explorer of the southwest. Dr. 

 Gray afterward considered it to be only a geographical variety of the 

 potato and renamed it Solanum hiberosum var. boreale. The account of 

 the plant as seen by Dr. Myers, contains the following reference to the 

 tubers: "The tubers, though small, being rarely so large as a hickory nut, 

 have been gathered, cooked, and eaten by officers and soldiers, and they 

 proved both palatable and innocent." This plant was grown in 1888 by 



•Ball. 31, Mich. Expt. Sta. 87. 



