When was the last time you ate a tomato or potato? And did you think about where the tasty plants come from?
Many of us associate tomatoes with Italy - after all, they're used in lots of pasta sauces and pizza! The Italian word for tomato is pomodoro, adapted from the older pomo d'oro, or golden apple. That really goes to show how much they love tomatoes, but French might top even that. In French, the word for a (specific kind but that's because the word tomate exists now) tomato is pomme d'amour, literally apple of love. The name for potato is much less romantic - pomme de terre, or apple of the earth. The Italian is patata, stolen from Spanish (and it's not alone - see History) according to Wiktionary. This makes sense - more on that later.
Clearly, those European countries enjoy tomatoes, but it hasn't always been this way. Tomatoes and potatoes are two staples around the world, so today is mostly a history day. Let's get right to it!
History
If you remember my post on deadly nightshade, the name Solanum might be ringing some (alarm) bells. It did for some Europeans when they were first introduced!
Both of these plants come from South and Central America and were domesticated as far as 10,000 years ago. They were brought to Europe in the early 16th century but were recognized as relatives of deadly nightshade and regarded with suspicion in northern Europe. This concern is reasonably valid, because every part of a tomato plant has a toxin called solanine in it (except for the fruit) and similarly, every part of a potato plant has solanine except for the actual potato. On the other hand, they had been eaten by the people of Southern and Central America for Quite A While before they were brought to Europe, so I feel like maybe that should've been a clue. On the other other hand, apparently European botanists sometimes mistook tomatoes for deadly nightshade when the plants even without fruits don't look that similar, so maybe they were just funky folks.
Subsection: Naming
Heh...I just thought this was cool and accidentally devoted three paragraphs to it.
The English name for tomatoes is thought to have come from the Nahuatl word tomatl, but there's much more that went into their naming story.
Tomatoes went through a few different name changes (including at least one that violated the International Code of Nomenclature) before settling on the one we use today (and even this one is not entirely agreed upon). There were a few taxonomy kerfuffles but eventually it was placed in a group of plants under Solanaceae called lycopersicon, literally wolf peach in Latin. Unfortunately for whoever decided it should be its own group, that was determined to be incorrect and they made a compromise: Solanum lycopersicon. Apparently the wolf peach thing came from Ye Olde German word for tomato, wolfpfirsich, which also means wolf peach. I have no idea about the peach part, but apparently Ye Olde German Folklore says that various members of the Solanaceae family have werewolf-summoning properties. If you happen to have any nightshade relatives lying around on the next full moon, try it out and let me know how it goes :D
Editor's note: S. lycopersicon and S. lycopersicum are both accepted names for the tomato plant
Potatoes also have a very interesting naming history. At least seven languages steal their words for potato from the Spanish patata which originally referred to the unrelated but similar looking sweet potato. At least another seven refer to potatoes as something that roughly translates to "apple of the earth," such as French. In the 16th century, a wonderful English fellow by the name of John Gerard decided to have different names for sweet potatoes and potato potatoes for the sake of simplicity and also the fact that nobody can say "potato potatoes" and sound professional. He called sweet potatoes "common potatoes" and potato potatoes "bastard potatoes." Why? I haven't the faintest idea. Funky European scientists strike again.
Now, the word "spud" used to refer to the hole that you would plant a potato in. Originally, it meant a specific kind of short dagger, which later broadened to digging tools, and then to the tubers themselves. There is a story about an 18th century "activism" group that was dedicated to keeping potatoes out of Britain called the Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diet, but I do not believe that this is actually true. Fun theory though.
Returning to Non-Naming History
Okay back to the history. Tomatoes and potatoes were introduced to the U.S. and Canada by European settlers, which is quite ridiculous when you consider they were well established in Mexico long before the arrival of Europeans further north. Thomas Jefferson was said to be fond of tomatoes and enjoyed eating them in front of guests, shocking them because at this point in time many still thought they were poisonous and would turn his blood to acid. There's a similar story involving one Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson in 1830 who set out to eat an entire basket of tomatoes on the steps of a courthouse, gathering a crowd who were waiting to see him foam at the mouth. That crowd left very disappointed, as Johnson did not have some kind of dramatic tomato allergy. Regardless of who gradually popularized tomatoes, by the time Joseph Campbell (yes, that Campbell) came out with his tomato soup in 1897, multiple varieties of tomatoes could be found in seed catalogues.
Potatoes were not exempt from this anti-Solanaceae discrimination. Northern Europeans grew them as exotic plants in botanical gardens, which is extremely funny to me now, but I will grudgingly admit that is valid...especially since they considered the plants to be the creation of the devil.
Aaanyhow. Potatoes are quirky because you can't eat anything except the tubers, but ALSO sometimes you can't even eat those! It's such a scam 🙄. With sufficient sunlight, potatoes turn greenish and that is how they tell you that they have accumulated solanine. There was a case in 1979 where potatoes poisoned over 80 people. Luckily, they all recovered in full. There seem to be Quite A Few incidences of solanine poisoning from greenish potatoes, but there have been comparatively very few fatal cases. However, there was at least one time where a cook received whole potato plants (no idea why you would do that when the majority is poisonous but who knows) and decided the tubers looked kinda crusty, throwing them out and only using the greens. Well, turns out the greens are poisonous! Oops.
Surprise! It's not all history ramblings :)
As the header suggests, I will briefly go into the plants themselves because I found out potatoes are even cooler than I thought.
Wild potatoes are not self-compatible; that is, they cannot self-pollinate. There are some varieties that have been modified to be self-compatible, which is very nice for gardeners. They're also interesting genetically, with some tetraploid and triploid species. Tetraploid means that there are four copies of each chromosome (DNA chunk) instead of the two that humans have, whereas triploid means that there are three copies of each chromosome. Potatoes can be anywhere from diploid to octoploid, meaning eight sets of each chromosome. This may not be meaningful to everyone, but I think it's pretty cool. Tomatoes are less funky from a biology perspective :(
Still tasty though!
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