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Botanical illustration of sweet potato plant from Mark Catesby’s The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1731-43)
Botanical illustration of a sweet potato plant from Mark Catesby’s The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1731-43), Volume II. Rare Books and Special Collections, Library of Congress. Image 187 https://www.loc.gov/item/agr02000176/

A Sweet Potato History

Posted by: Jennifer Harbster

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The inspiration for this post comes from a reader’s comment about wanting more information about the origin of “candied” yams.

Here is what I learned…

Whether you boil and drizzle with molasses or mash and top with marshmallows, sweet potatoes* have become a staple at Thanksgiving tables.

Did you know that sweet potatoes were cultivated and consumed before the white (Irish) potato?

The earliest cultivation records of the sweet potato date to 750 BCE in Peru, although archeological evidence shows cultivation of the sweet potato might have begun around 2500-1850 BCE.  By the time Christopher Columbus arrived in the ‘New World’ in the late 15th century, sweet potatoes were well established as food plants in South and Central America.

drawing of a sweet potato with its leaves
Sweet Potato from John Gerard’s Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes (1597)

Columbus brought sweet potatoes back to Spain, in