Mountain Home maverick. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1906-1911, 1906-09-27
"MURPHYS" AND
OTHER POTATOES
History of EuberS Traced
From Earliest Historic
Records FaIStaff'S
Remarks.

number of the Scientific American
Supplement-, the author remarks
that ''almost the earliest mention of
potatoes, after their introduction
from Virginia into Ireland in 1884
by Sir Walter Raleigh, is made by
Falstaff in The Merry Wives of
Windsor, where he says: Let the
sky rain potatoes; let it thunder
to the tune of Green Sleeves, hail
l<issing-comfits, and snow erin
goes. - The potato of Shakespear,
however, and of all writer's from
the middle of the sixteenth to about
the middle of the seventeenth CEN
fury, was the root to which the
name rightful1y belongs that OF
Bstatas edulis, Choisy (Convolvus
edulis, LIZ one of the most widely
distributed plants of Central and
South America.
The first mention of the aborigi-
nal name botata or batata is found
in the ninth book of the second
decade published in 1870 of the
New World of West India by Peter
Martyr, who gives it as the desig-
nation of an edible root found in
use among the natives of the prov
ince of Urba, Darien. In the fourth
book of the third decade, he men
tions the batata among the vegetable
products found in Honduras when
Columbus, in his fourth voyage,
landed on that coast in 1902. The
Spaniards adopted the name and
thereafter applied it wherever they
found the root in cultivation or
wherever they themselves intro
duced it, and thus gave the Darien
apppellation varied by different
writers to patata, potata, potato,
potada, padada, etc. wide dis
semination.
According to Gomara (1553)
Columbus carried the potato, among
other products of the New World,
to Spain on his return home in
1904, and presented it TO Queen
Isabella. The consequence was that
the culture of the plant, which is
well suited to the climate of that
country, vas soon afterward begun
there, and subsequently in other
parts of southern Europe, and by
the middle of the sixteenth century
had become common.
At an early period the roots were
imported from Spain and the Cana
ny Islands into England, where,
when stepped in wine or made into
CONNECTIONS, they were believed to
have the power of restoring de-
caying vigor, fact to which, as
well as to the supposed aphrodisiac
properties of eryngo root, covert al
fusion is made in the above quo
tation from Shakespeare.
The transfer OF the same to the
tuber of Solanum tuberosum is due
to John Gerard, who in his descrip-
ton of it (Hebrall, 1897, p. 81
says: Because it hath not onely
the shape and proportion of Pota-
to's but also the pleasant taste
and virtues of the same, we may
cell it an English Potatoes OF
America or Virginia. - Such a
transfer was unfortunate, since il
was subsequently to involve the
necessity of using epithets, COLO
quially and in print, to distinguish
the two esculents-those OF
Irish, English, round, -
common ETC., for the Solanum,
and of ''sweet, - Spanish, - Car
olina' Bermuda, 'West To-
dia," long" ETC., for the Bata-
tas.
The common potato (which, b.
the way, is a thickened under.
ground branch of the stem, and mo-
like the sweet potato, a tuberous
root) was at the time of the dis
covery of America, in cultivation
from Chilli, to which it is indi.
genous, along the greater part o.
the Andes, as far north as to New
Granada. 1t was introduced from
Quito into Spain about 1880 under
the name OF papa, which, il
Spanish it still bears. From Spair
II found its way to Italy, where i
became known as tartuffalo, anC
thence was carried to Mons in Bel
gium by one of the attendants o
the Pope's legate to that country
In 1888 it was sent by Philippe d,
Sivry, governor of Mons, to thu
botanist de PEcluse, professor a
the University of Leyden, who, il
1901, published the first good de
scription of it under the name o
Papas Peruanorun, and stated tina
1t had then spread throughout Ger
many. Recommended in France b
Caspa Bauhin, the culture of tn
tuber rapidly extended in 159