Plants That Changed Our Lives The Potato

Despite originating in South America, this plant was the cause of the worst famine to occur in 19th century Europe

- Martyn Baguley

Last month’s plant subject, the poppy, had a profound effect on the history of China, but this month’s plant, a small tuber native to South America, has done more: it has both influenced the fate of one country (Ireland) and the population of another (the United States of America).

Google ‘Irish potato famine’ and you will find that the web is awash with sickening photographs of abjectly poor people being evicted from humble cottages, homesteads being bulldozed and starving families, carrying a few meagre possessions, plodding away from burning dwellings. (Skip the next bit if it’s depressing you.) Some found their way to the slums of Dublin, Cork and Belfast. Figures vary but between 1845 and 1850, as a direct result of the potato famine, in Ireland an estimated one million people died and an additional one million emigrated, many in what were called ‘coffin ships’, to North America, Australia and New Zealand. Between 1841 and 1851 the population of Ireland fell from 8 million to 6.5 million: today some 32 million people living in the USA (10 per cent of the population) claim Irish ancestry. All because of a small tuberous plant native to South America.