SOLANUM TUBEROSUM Linn.

PATATAS

Solanum sinense Blanco

Local names: Patatas (Sp., Tag.); potato (Engl.).

Patatas is cultivated at higher altitudes, specially in the Mountain

Province, Luzon, and in the Lanao region in Mindanao. It was introduced from
America.

This plant is a perennial herb with rough, pinnate leaves. The flowers are
rather large and borne on compound inflorescences, with a star-shaped, white or
violet, corolla, and 3 to 4 centimeters in diameter. The fruit is yellowish green,
and many-seeded.

Potatoes have a very high starch content and are also valuable as an
energy-giving food. According to Marañon potatoes grown in Baguio are
deficient in calcium and are only fair sources of iron.

Wehmer records the presence of a gluco-alkaloid, solanine, in the fresh

plant, 0.0101 to 0.0489 per cent; flowers, 0.6 to 0.7 per cent; unripe fruit, about 1
per cent; seeds, 0.25 per cent; tubers; buds, 0.02 per cent; skin, 0.07 per cent;
starchy region, 0.002 per cent; and shoots, 0.02 to 0.05 per cent. According to
Nadkarni the sprouting, growing tubers are poisonous, as well as the flowers,
unripe seeds, and leaves as they contain colanine. The full-grown potato-tuber
does not contain solanine.

The tuber is official in the Belgian (1-3); Danish (3); French (1-5); Mexican
(1-4); Spanish (5,6); Swedish (6); Japanese (2,3); Norwegian (1); and Dutch (3,4)
Pharmacopoeias.

According to Nadkarni, medicinally, the potato is anti-scorbutic. Persons

with neurotic and liver dyspepsia digest it well. It is employed as an aperient, a
diuretic, and a galactagogue, and as a nervous sedative and stimulant in gout.
Potato, ground into a paste, is applied as a plaster to burns caused by fire with
much benefit. Pareira says that boiled potatoes have been used for the formation
of emollient poultices. They may be employed as an antidote to poisoning by
iodine.

Nadkarni reports that the leaves, in the form of extract, are employed as
an antispasmodic in chronic coughs, producing effects like those of opium.
Pareira adds that the extract is also used as a narcotic.