CHAPTER II. 



ROOTS AND TUBERS. 



POTATO. 



THE history of the Potato has often been written, but perhaps one of 

 the most complete accounts was by " W. S. M." in the " Gardeners' 

 Chronicle " (April 17 and ff., 1886), from which the following items 

 are partly extracted. 



The first to write about and figure the potato in England was Gerard 

 in his "Herbal," 1597. He describes the "Potatoes of Virginia, 

 Battata virginiana sine virginianorum, et Papus." He says that he 

 received roots from Virginia, and compares them with the former or 

 " common potatos," by which he means the sweet potato. 



The portrait which forms the frontispiece of the " Herbal " repre- 

 sents Gerard holding a spray of the potato, having leaves, flowers, 

 and fruit, in his hand, so that it was evidently at that time a 

 remarkable plant. Indeed, he seems to have first received it only 

 about ten years before the " Herbal " was published. " W. S. M." 

 gives an interesting account of the various voyages to America, and 

 shows that Gerard was in error if he supposed the potato to have been 

 a native of Virginia i.e. the island of Roanoke,* not the present State 

 of Virginia on the mainland. 



Before Gerard's time the potato was known to Continental botanists. 

 Clusius in 1588 had received two tubers at Vienna, sent from Belgium. 

 Earlier still, by at least one year, it had been received at Breslau, and 

 was growing in the garden of Dr. Scholtz. Bauhin, in 1596, alludes 

 to an " iconem suis coloribus delineatum " of the date 1590. 



As to the origin of the name Papus, Gerard says: "It groweth 

 naturally in America, as reporteth C. Clusius." If we have no record 

 of its actual first discovery, we at least have records going as far back 

 as sixty years earlier than the date of Gerard's writing, and these 

 records take our attention to South America. Pedro Ciaza de Leon, in 

 a work published at Seville in 1553, speaking of the fields and crops of 

 the villages of the Collao district of Peru, says: " Their principal food 

 is papas, which are like earth-nuts." Tracing the use of this word in 

 the writings of Bauhin (1596 and 1620) and of Clusius (1601), it 

 cannot be doubted, though there is no Spanish authority, that the 

 potato is really meant, its name being an Anglicized form of Battata. 



* So Bauhin writes : " They were first brought from the Island Virginia into 

 England and thence to France and elsewhere." 



