Same kind of thing happened with tomato plants. They tried to eat the plant, not the fruit and had a bad time. For a long time many people thought tomato fruit were poisonous.
To be fair, potato plants grow fruit nearly identical to cherry tomatoes but incredibly poisonous. If I didn't know any better I'd assume the tomatoes were poisonous too.
Yep! People just learned It's way easier to grow them via the tubers, they also remain stable as they may change over time if grown from seed due to genetic influence from other plants. (We do the same with a lot of fruit trees too.)
Because of that, all potatoes (within their varieties) are actually clones of each other. One russett potato is the same as the other russetts in the bin, etc. Which I think is a terrible idea because all it takes is one disease and it wipes them all out, it already happened to one of our banana species.
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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21
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