On the other hand. M. Ed. André[133] collected with great care, in two elevated and wild districts of Columbia, and in another near Lima, specimens which he believed he might attribute to S. tuberosum. M. André has been kind enough to lend them to me. I have compared them attentively with the types of Dunal’s species in my herbarium and in that of M. Boissier. None of these Solanaceæ belong, in my opinion, to S. tuberosum, although that of La Union, near the river Cauca, comes nearer than the rest. None—and this is yet more certain—answers to S. immite of Dunal. They are nearer to S. columbianum of the same author than to S. tuberosum or S. immite. The specimen from Mount Quindio presents a singular characteristic—it has pointed ovoid berries.[134]
In Mexico the tuberous Solanums attributed to S. tuberosum, or, according to Hemsley,[135] to allied forms, do not appear to be identical with the cultivated plant. They belong to S. Fendleri, which Dr. Asa Gray considered at first as a separate species, and afterwards[136] as a variety of S. tuberosum or of S. verrucosum.
We may sum up as follows:—
1. The potato is wild in Chili, in a form which is still seen in our cultivated plants.
2. It is very doubtful whether its natural home extends to Peru and New Granada.
3. Its cultivation was diffused before the discovery of America from Chili to New Granada.
4. It was introduced, probably in the latter half of the sixteenth century, into that part of the United States now known as Virginia and North Carolina.
5. It was imported into Europe between 1580 and 1585, first by the Spaniards, and afterwards by the English, at the time of Raleigh’s voyages to Virginia.[137]
Batata, or Sweet Potato—Convolvulus batatas, Linnæus; Batatas edulis, Choisy.
The roots of this plant, swelled into tubers, resemble potatoes, whence it arose that sixteenth-century navigators applied the same name to these two very different species. The sweet potato belongs to the Convolvulus family, the potato to the Solanum family; the fleshy parts of the former are roots, those of the latter subterranean branches.[138] The sweet potato is sugary as well as farinaceous. It is cultivated in all countries within or near the tropics, and perhaps more in the new than in the old world.[139]