Potato Puns and other Fun - Issue 8 – September 2nd

Welcome to the eighth issue of Potato Puns and other Fun!

Inside this issue

1. The Joke – A tale from Toy Story.

2. The Fact – More than meets the eye(s).

3. Other Fun – Celebrating spuds.

The Joke

Why did none of the other toys trust Mr. Potato Head?

Sometimes they thought he had eyes in the back of his head!

The Fact

When it comes to potatoes there is always more than meets the eye(s)!

With 4000 different cultivars of potatoes, give or take a few, there is some significant variability across the species Solanum tuberosum. Would you be surprised to learn that some types of potatoes have fewer eyes than others?! Furthermore, those eyes vary in their depth, ranging from being shallow and barely visible to deep and potentially unsightly [pun intended]. If that wasn’t interesting enough, those same eyes can be unevenly distributed across the potato tuber. The distribution of these eyes means that one end of the potato tuber may have more eyes than the other. The pictures below show that two different potato varieties can have two different sets of eyes.

Gourmandine cultivar, photo by Solanum International. Can you see the eyes? Note: the brown-ish dots are called lenticels and are used for gas exchange, they are not the eyes. Adapted from: https://www.solanum-int.com/potato/gourmandine/

Krone cultivar, photo by Solanum International. The eyes are prominent. Adapted from: https://www.solanum-int.com/potato/krone/

Now it seems like the other toys in Toy Story had a good reason to suspect Mr. Potato Head had eyes in the back of his head!

Other Fun

While we celebrate potatoes every month with this newsletter, there are larger single and multi-day festivals around the world celebrating the spud! Another author has already compiled a list of these festivals and it can be found here: https://www.alcademics.com/2014/10/potato-festivals-around-the-us-and-a-few-in-other-countries.html

A couple Canadian festivals are featured here…

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND!
The Huble Homestead Historic Site Potato Festival, taking place September 5th and 6th near Prince George, BC. Check out their Facebook event and page! https://www.facebook.com/hublehomestead/events

Portage la Prairie Potato Festival in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. http://portagepotatofest.ca/

Alliston Potato Festival in Alliston, Ontario. http://www.allistonpotatofestival.com/

Grand Falls Regional Potato Festival in Grand Falls, New Brunswick. https://www.gfpotatofestival.ca/

Unfortunately, restrictions due to COVID have required some of these events to be postponed.