How do you recognise Potato (Solanum tuberosum)?

Leaf

Danny Steven S., Wikimedia · CC BY-SA 3.0

Potato

Solanum tuberosum L.

Family: Solanaceae

50 to 80 cm tall

Grown in vegetable gardens and as a field crop

Flowering: June – August

Full sun

Not hardy in growth, frost-sensitive; the tubers survive cold in the ground if they do not freeze

❓ How do you recognise this plant?

What we eat is not a root but a tuber — a swollen underground stem that stores the plant's reserves. Before fruiting, their divided foliage is almost impossible to tell apart — both are closely related members of the Solanaceae. It is the stem and above all the fruit that settle it.

🍃 Leaves

Compound, pinnate, dark green, characteristic smell when crushed

🌸 Flowers

White, pink or purple depending on variety, with 5 petals fused into a star

🍎 Fruits

Small green berry, toxic, rarely formed in cultivation

🪵 Bark

Angular herbaceous stem; the tubers eaten form on underground stems

🗺️ Distribution

Native to the Andes; grown worldwide, one of the most widely grown vegetables in France

🐝 Value for pollinators

Flowers poor in nectar, pollination mainly by buzzing (bumblebees)

✂️ Horticultural uses

Vegetable garden crop grown for its tubers; propagated by planting tubers

⚠️ Possible toxicity

Tuber edible once cooked; the green parts (leaves, stems, berries, greened or sprouted tubers) contain solanine, which is toxic

⚠️ Look-alike species

Potato

Solanum tuberosum

Tomato

Solanum lycopersicum

Before fruiting, their divided foliage is almost impossible to tell apart — both are closely related members of the Solanaceae. It is the stem and above all the fruit that settle it.

Potato

Solanum tuberosum

Black nightshade

Solanum nigrum

The small black berries of black nightshade look like unripe cherry tomatoes, but the whole plant is toxic — unlike the tomato or the potato, its cultivated cousins. A simple check: if the 'mini-tomatoes' are the size of a small pea, grow in small loose clusters and stay black even when ripe, it is not a tomato.

Potato

Solanum tuberosum

Eggplant

Solanum melongena

The purple star-shaped flowers with a centre of yellow stamens look very similar in the aubergine and in potato varieties with purple flowers — the same floral architecture as in all cultivated Solanaceae. It is the foliage (entire and downy in the aubergine, deeply divided in the potato) and above all the fruit that tell them apart unambiguously.

🌿 Other Solanaceae to discover

ℹ️ Educational profile — do not use it to judge whether a plant is edible or safe.

🌱 This database is constantly evolving — species and information are added and corrected regularly. Spotted a mistake? Report it below.