Solanum tuberosum L., Potato

Introduction, neophyte, a very rare casual escape or discard from cultivation.

21 August 1986; Wolfe-Murphy, S.A.; waste ground, E shore of Lough Head.

This extremely familiar vegetable grows occasionally on waste ground and rubbish tips from potato tubers in transported soil, discarded agricultural waste, garden rubbish or domestic refuse, but the high level of disturbance usual in such sites means that it does not persist and, therefore, it is regarded as merely casual. The tuberous perennial nature of the plant, however, must enable it to reproduce effectively in more stable situations.

There are only two records in the Fermanagh Flora Database for S. tuberosum, but while they are both from waste ground, the situations appear rather more semi-natural than for most records of this species elsewhere. The details of the first record are given above, the details of the second site where it was found are: Drumbuleen, S of Irvinestown, 16 August 1994, RHN.

The current author (RSF) and his H33 joint BSBI Recorder colleague, RHN, consider it very probable that, as is the case with other crop casuals, S. tuberosum has in the past often been simply overlooked or ignored by field botanists in Fermanagh and it is, therefore, under-recorded. It could be argued that it is insignificant, in conservation terms at least, and so why bother with recording it!

As if to prove that this is the case, the Cen Cat Fl Ir 2 completely ignores S. tuberosum. The Cat Alien Pl Ir described S. tuberosum as a, "fairly frequent casual". However, it lists only eleven VCs with records – Fermanagh not being included. Altogether, Reynolds, the author of A catalogue of alien plants in Ireland, gives details of very few occurrences, and none of the sites mentioned could be regarded as being even semi-natural.

The accounts in the two inner-city Floras of Dublin and Belfast showed the potato is often established from domestic or garden rubbish, typically being found near habitation. It was, for instance, recorded in twelve of the 14 subdivisions of inner Dublin (Wyse Jackson et al. 1984), while in Belfast it was found in 30 of the 76 one km squares in the city survey (Beesley & Wilde 1997).

The Flora of County Dublin (Doogue et al. 1998) reckoned that, "some clumps (of potato) appear to persist for a few years". Several editions of the Flora of the NE of Ireland described potato as a, "frequent casual escape, never permanent", an overall position the current author and RHN would happily endorse (Praeger & Megaw 1938; Hackney et al. 1992). The New Atlas shows that on a B & I scale, records exist in 17.5% of hectads across the two islands (Preston et al. 2002).