532 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1925 



condition anywhere. * * * So far as the number and rehition- 

 ship of the species referred to the scetion Tuberarium are concerned, 

 the evidence is favorable to the central Andean region.^^ 



SUMMARY 



From the evidence presented in this paper the following sum- 

 mary may be made : 



I. The statement that the potato was found growing in North 

 America by the English colonists and carried thence to England, 

 for which Gerard is responsible, is not true; the openawk of the 

 Algonquin Indians with wdiich it was confused by early writers is 

 a tuber-bearing climber of the bean family, the Glycine apios of 

 Linnteus. 



II. The story of its introduction into Ireland by Sir Walter 

 Raleigh is a myth invented in 1693, more than a hundred years 

 after the return of his ill-fated colon}' from Roanoke Island. The 

 Drake myth which was substituted for it is equally without 

 foundation. 



III. The cultivation of Solanum tuberosum in pre-Columbian 

 times extended from southern Chile along the Andes and the high- 

 lands of Peru and Bolivia to the mountains of Ecuador and Co- 

 lombia, but did not reach the sliorc of the Caribbean Sea. The 

 " potatoes " encountered on the shore and islands of that sea by 

 early navigators were sweet potatoes. 



IV. It was carried to Europe from South America by the 

 Spaniards soon after 1580, thence to Ital}', and in 1588 reached 

 Charles I'Ecluse, keeper of the botanical garden at Vienna. It was 

 cultivated as a field crop in Ireland before 1663. It did not reach 

 the United States until 1719, when it was brought from Ireland 

 by immigrants who settled at Londonderry, N. H. The Irish 

 potato reached the West Indies after 1700, and was first propagated 

 from seed brought from the British Isles. 



V. Dried specimens and representations of potatoes in terra 

 cotta found in prehistoric tombs show that excellent varieties had 

 been developed before the discovery of America. 



VI. Numerous species of tuber-bearing Solanums have been col- 

 lected in various parts of America both north and south of the 

 equator, but Solanum tuberosum itself has never been found in its 

 Avild state. Evidence as to the place of its origin points to the 

 central Andean region where conditions of soil and climate are 

 such that a number of plants of other families have developed 

 tubers of a similar nature. 



s' Wight, W. F. Origin, introduction, and primitive culture of the potato, in Proceed- 

 ings of the Tliird Annual Meeting of the Potato A.ssociation of America, p. 37. 1916. 



