Appearing in practically every color in the rainbow, the lowly potato has changed the world for many centuries in ways that most have never imagined. Here in the United States, there are many of people of several heritages, who simply do not know the role that potatoes played in the history of their own ethnicity and country.

Before we look at that -- Let's take a look at the potato

It is generally accepted that in the wild, the potato plant originated in Peru.  Although varieties grew wild throughout the Americas, it was not known as a food source in Europe before 1536.

Additionally, it was not accepted by Americans as a food staple, until after Benjamin Franklin promoted them, after eating them when he was Ambassador to France.

This doesn't mean that cultivated potatoes weren't farmed in the United States before them, just that they were not a popular food. They had been experimented in as a crop since 1719, but were viewed with suspicion by many, as possibly being poison. As a member of the nightshade plant family, this is completely understandable.

Yet, many people, particularly sailors in the Old World, were familiar with the potato. As early as 1589, Sir Walter Raleigh was growing potatoes near Cork, Ireland.

There are literally thousands of varieties of potatoes, with more being discovered each year in the Andes. These plants are herbaceous perennials that die back after flowering.

As a wild plant, and even as a cultivated plant, they have pretty blue, pink, purple, or red flowers that contain yellow stamens. The tubers (potatoes) sort of follow the color of their flower, which I think is an interesting fact, particularly in light of it being little known.

Potatoes require the cooperation of nature, because they need cross-pollination and many insects contribute to this process. However, it is the bumblebee (not the honeybee), that plays the most significant role. There are some varieties of potatoes, however, that are self-pollinating.

The potato is a tuber or the swollen part of a stem. Like many other plants, the potato has both above-ground green leafy stems and underground rhizomes. The part of the potato we eat is the swollen portion of the underground stem, or rhizome. We call it a tuber.

Tubers then, like runners, rhizomes, layers, bulbs, and corms -- are actually stem structures, although most of them grow underground.

They all bear leaves or leaf scars, and they have buds just above the leaves or leaf scars. Stems always have this structure, while roots never have leaves with buds just above them. In the potato, the eyes are the buds. The "eyebrow" is the leaf scar.

To plant potatoes -- you simply cut up the tubers, making sure that there is an eye on each piece, and allow the pieces to become dry. A plant will grow from each eye.

Long before the Spaniards came to the New World, the potato had been cultivated by the Indians of the Chilean and Peruvian Andes.

It is believed that the first potato was taken to Europe from Peru by the Spanish sometime during the early sixteenth century.

From Spain, the plant seems to have spread to others parts of the Continent.  It was grown merely as a curiosity until the latter part of the eighteenth century. Others contend that Sir John Hawkins took the potato to England in 1565, but it seems likely that this was a sweet potato. A mathematician, Thomas Harriot, probably took the potato to English in 1585. He sailed on one of Sir Frances Drake's ships, so Drake is also said to have introduced the potato into England.

One fact is certain, Sir Walter Reaigh first grew potatoes in England and Ireland. Still, the tuber was not apprecaited as a food then, or for many years thereafter.

A famous work on gardening, published in 1719, failed to even mention the potato. Some individuals, however, did recognize the value of the potato at an early date. In fact, the Royal Society of London recommended it as a possible safeguard against famine in Ireland.  Possible famine had always been a reality among the poor in Ireland.

It was on this account that the potato was grown more extensively in Ireland than in England. It became a staple in Ireland, and today we still call it the Irish Potato.

In France, the potato was not grown for food until after 1778, when Louis XVI saw a display of plants in bloom. The King, however, was less interested in the potatoes themselves, than in the flowers.  The flower pleased him so much that he freqently picked one and put it in his buttonhole.

It began with the strange laws having to do with corn. In the end, the potato would change the face of Ireland when over one million of it's people died. Simultaneously it would also change the face of America to include over one million more new immigrants, Even today, what happened is still a hotly debated issue both politically and historically.

What little is taught about the Potato Famine, here in the United States, is very much minimized in some school texts. This is most likely a result of the English influence that our textbooks, particularly in the primary grades and through high school.

This was a time when the agricultural interests fore-ran all other forms of industry. It was before the heyday of American industrial revolution, when manufacturing and commercial interests lagged behind.

In the New World, in the United States, agriculture was at a natural advantage that actually would aid later the industrial development. So it was encouraged and manufacturers were at a natural disadvantage. This largely had to do with attitudes of people and the government.

Whereas, there was an exact reversal of policy in England. In that country, the suggestion and motive of Protective System had always proceeded from the manufacturing and artisan classes. In fact, the Protective system had been in place for more than one hundred and fifty years, and inveterately pursued in Great Britain with respect to agricultural produce.

Now, it would amaze many that the concept of "free trade" originated in the very heart of English manufacturing towns. It was fostered there and promoted from those places as centers by manufacturer's propaganda. It was finally forced, as a permanent policy on the British Parliament -- against the fiercest opposition of the landlord and country squires of the Nation. It's that struggle that brought about the Irish Potato famine.

The whole problem was rooted in the Corn Laws, an old 1815 statue of of 1670 was reenacted by Parliament. Under the new law, the ports of England were absolutely closed against the importation of foreign grain. That is, such was the effect of the law. In some cases the price of what was raised to nearly five dollars a bushel. It is needless to say that the crowded people of the manufacturing towns cried out fiercely against such prices.

It was later only an amendment to the Corn Laws, by which a sliding scale, as it was called, was substituted for the Act of 1815, that the clamor of the starving populace was stilled for a season.

The aim of the policy was to preserve and maintain a high price on English cereals, so that they might be produced, notwithstanding the disadvantages under which such production had been placed by nature and weather.

From 1815 to 1841, it may be said that the Corn Laws were upheld both in theory and practice. Self interest was thought to be sub-served by such a law.

Now, keep in mind that every member of the House of Lords was a large land-owner, and fully five-sixths of the members of the House of Commons were also in the same category. Parliament was a land-owning institution. It was virtually based on land-ownership.

Soon the manufacturers and artisans were pitted against the land-owning institutions. The manufacturing interests were largely unrepresented in Great Britain in the government body. Even if they were represented at all, it was believed because of their subordinated importance to the landed interests of the kingdom -- that their concerns were of little consequence.

By 1832, there were men who stepped in and launched a war of words against Corn Laws. The Anti-corn law League campaigned actively to reverse public opinion and substitute the principle of free trade, instead of the old protective system. Ten years later, that campaign of agitation moved from manufacturing town to manufacturing town.

In the heart the storm that was brewing boiled over led by Richard Cobden. The year was 1838, when a commercial crisis occurred in the town of Bolton-le-Moors in Lancashire. Nearly all the business interests of the town and surrounding region, went to wreck. Three-fifths of the manufacturing businesses were shut down. More than five thousand working men were thrown out of employment, left homeless, and without the means of securing any other work.

The suffering families in manufacturing towns demanded grain and bread. This disaster was compounded when the same ruling class of landowners and government spread woes to include Ireland, with a little help from a natural disaster.

The summer of 1845 in Ireland was usually wet and cold. That kind of situation with a potato crop made it ripe for disease. A blight of rot attacked the young bulbs before maturity. By mid-summer, half the potato crop in Ireland was destroyed. Since the Irish population was dependant upon potatoes for subsistence, they had virtually nothing else to eat.

Their cry of hunger was to be heart across the channel. At first, the stories of famine growing in Ireland were not believed. Some in governmental control, just thought it was more agitators in the manufacturing political war starting rumors.

Grain was Britain's cash crop and their biggest export. Ireland had been excluded of the Corn Laws. The price of grains were out of reach for the poor of Ireland. The rich land owners and they weren't backing down on the price. They would not send grain to the starving Irish.

As a result, an Gorta Mór (the Irish potato famine) didn't just happen because of crop failure or blight. While this natural disaster played a small role, it was political and social issues that caused the Irish people to starve. The British could have helped but chose not to do so for strictly financial reasons.

As a result, thousands of Irish fled for the New World, it was either that or starve. Some towns lost more than half their population to immigration. Still worse, was that it was the young and able fleeing.

The whole situation also had a lot to do with the struggle between the Catholics and the Protestants. Under British rule, Irish Catholics could not own or buy land. They had to rent their land or work on land that belonged to British Protestant landlords.

Additionally, it was in part a "land grab" by the wealthy, as they took advantage of the situation and removed poorer tenants who could not pay their rent in mass evictions. Then, they could rent out the land in larger pieces, to remaining tenants who could afford to pay more.

By the opening of the nineteenth century, the potato was used in almost all civilized countries of the world.

The potato yields a great amount of food per acre. It grows in a great variety of places and does not need the rich soil that many other crops demand.

Potatoes can even be grown in containers, such as trash cans or in sacks.

The sweet potato is not a tuber, but an enlarged root. Examine one and you will find no eyes and no leaf scars. However, it is easy to grow a plant by putting a sweet potato or a part of one in either water or soil.

It is interesting to plant both a potato and a sweet potato and notice how very different the growing habits of these plants are.

The sweet potato produces a beautiful vine much like a morning glory vine, with morning glory like flowers.

As one of the good relatives of the potato, unlike its cousins, the morning glory or deadly nightshade plant, it is one of the most valuable food sources.

The part of the plant that we eat is the fleshy root. This often grows to enormous size in some varieties. In Indonesia, it is found to weigh up to fifty pounds.

The Sweet potato is propagated by slips grown from the roots. Yams, while seeming similar to the Sweet potato and potato, belong to another plant family altogether.