(Nat. Ord. Solanaceæ, see Botany), a valuable vegetable, said to be introduced into this country by Sir W. Raleigh about 1586. Queen Elizabeth in 1584 granted a patent "for discovering and planting new countries not possessed by Christians," when Raleigh equipped some ships and set sail for America. Thomas Herriott, who accompanied the expedition, sent home the description of a plant called openawk by the natives of Virginia. Gerard, in his Herbal, mentions that he had the plant from Virginia, that he had grown seedlings of it in 1590, and that it grew admirably in his garden. He gave it the name of Solanum tuberosum, afterwards adopted by Linnæus, and which it still retains. Sir Robert Southwood, president of the Royal Society, claimed the honour for his grandfather of having first cultivated this plant in Ireland, where it has so long constituted the principal food of the peasantry. Sir Robert stated that his ancestor obtained roots of the potato from Sir Walter Raleigh. The story of Sir Walter's gardener at Youghal, on going to taste the apples of the fine American fruit, being so sadly mortified at not finding them, and of his subsequent discovery of the tubers when his master desired him to throw out the weeds, is probably authentic.

The potato, it seems, had been known in Europe for Potemkin, some considerable time before. The name which we now apply to it seems to be taken from the Spanish or Portuguese, while they derived the epithet from the mountaineers of Quito in South America. The inhabitants of Quito called it papas, which the Spanish corrupted into battata, and the Portuguese softened into batata; hence the English potato. This plant was cultivated in Ireland long before its introduction into Lancashire, which was owing, it is said, to a shipwreck at the mouth of the Ribble. From Lancashire it soon spread, first into the gardens, and gradually into the fields of Great Britain. (For the cultivation and disease of the potato, see Agriculture.)