Potato

Potato Description

The Potato is the staple food of many cultures and civilizations past and present, and is the world's fourth largest food crop. The term Potato is used to refer both to the plant, and the vegetable itself. It is a stem tuber from the plant Solanum tuberosum, and is extremely starchy.

The potato plant itself grows about 60 cm off the ground. This of course depends on variety or cultivar, but the don't generally grow much higher than that. The plant is a herbaceous perennial. The potato plant grows flowers that are purple, white, red, blue or pink. All have yellow stamens, and look a lot like plants in the same family; aubergine and tomatos.

The cultivars with white flowers normally have white skins on the potatos, but coloured flowers normally means pink-colored skinned potatoes. The potato plant is known to self-fertilize, but a lot of cross-pollination occurs by insects, especially bumblebees. Some varieties of potato plants produce toxic fruits after flowering which resemble dark green cherry tomatos.