1. Cultivation
The potato, a root plant, was already cultivated by the Incas as a root crop; it was brought to Europe in the 1550s in the wake of the discovery of America (America, discovery of) by returning Spanish and Portuguese mariners (Columbian Exchange). By the 1570s, it was already being cultivated on a small scale in fields near Seville [2. 158 f.]; [3. 192]; [9. 141 f., 148]. At the end of the 16th century, it found its way as a botanical curiosity into the gardens of the English, French, and German aristocrac…