The World of Apples

The apples that aren't

Potato

Solanum tuberosum, Solanaceae, the nightshade family

The potato is the tuber of a South American nightshade8. Kew gives its native range as western and southern South America2, and a genetic study found that the Andean landraces, grown from western Venezuela to northern Argentina and in southern Chile, come from a single domestication from wild species in Peru3.

Its European apple-names are older than the potato in Europe, where the Dutch etymological dictionary says it became known only after 15654. Dutch erdappel is recorded in 1351 for the root of the mandrake and for sowbread; aardappel means the potato only from the early eighteenth century4. Old High German erdaphul named a melon, sowbread and alkanet root in the eleventh century; Erdapfel has meant the potato since the seventeenth, today mostly in Austria5. In Latin the malum terrae was Aristolochia6.

The French is pomme de terre, apple of the earth; in Old French pomme could mean any fruit7. Hebrew and Persian translated it as tapúakh adamá and sib-zamini7.

Where the sources disagree

  • Translation or older word? Wiktionary treats the Dutch and German names, like the Hebrew and Persian, as translations of the French7; the Dutch and German etymological dictionaries find erdappel and erdaphul naming other plants centuries before the potato reached Europe4,5.
  • When aardappel became the potato. The Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands dates the modern sense to 1708; Van Veen and Van der Sijs to 17124.

Sources

  1. GBIF Backbone Taxonomy: Solanum tuberosum, Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Supports: the accepted name and family.
  2. Plants of the World Online: Solanum tuberosum, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Supports: the accepted name and the native range, "W. & S. South America to NW. Venezuela".
  3. A single domestication for potato based on multilocus amplified fragment length polymorphism genotyping, David M. Spooner and others, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2005. Supports: the Andean and Chilean landraces, where they are grown, and their single origin from wild species in Peru.
  4. aardappel, Etymologiebank, quoting the Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands (2003–2009) and Van Veen and Van der Sijs (1997). Supports: the potato known in Europe only after 1565; erdappel for mandrake root and sowbread in 1351; aardappel for the potato from 1708 (EWN) or 1712 (Van Veen and Van der Sijs).
  5. Erdapfel, Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, with Wolfgang Pfeifer's Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Supports: Old High German erdaphul for melon, sowbread and alkanet root in the eleventh century; Erdapfel for the potato from the seventeenth century, now mostly in Austria.
  6. mālum, in Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, via Logeion, University of Chicago. Supports: malum terrae as a name for Aristolochia.
  7. pomme de terre, Wiktionary. Supports: the literal meaning; pomme meaning fruit in Old French; the Dutch, German, Hebrew and Persian names treated as translations of the French; the Mauritian Creole pomdeter.
  8. potato, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fifth edition, HarperCollins, 2022. Supports: the tuber of a plant of the nightshade family, first cultivated in South America and widely grown for its tubers.