Potato cultivars appear in a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes. The little potato recipes boiled is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant Solanum tuberosum and is a root vegetable native to the Americas.

Wild potato species can be found from the southern United States to southern Chile. Potatoes were introduced to Europe from the Americas by the Spanish in the second half of the 16th century. Today they are a staple food in many parts of the world and an integral part of much of the world’s food supply. Like the tomato, the potato is a nightshade in the genus Solanum, and the vegetative and fruiting parts of the potato contain the toxin solanine which is dangerous for human consumption. The name originally referred to the sweet potato although the two plants are not closely related.

Apart from the 5,000 cultivated varieties, there are about 200 wild species and subspecies, many of which can be cross-bred with cultivated varieties. The International Potato Center, based in Lima, Peru, holds 4,870 types of potato germplasm, most of which are traditional landrace cultivars. There are close to 4,000 varieties of potatoes, each of which has specific agricultural or culinary attributes. Around 80 varieties are commercially available in the UK. A thin section of a potato under light microscopy.