I cleaned Alfie's cupboard...

quite pretty really....

wow. why do some of them grow grow grow and some just go grreen?

They look positively crustacean.

I think they might come out of our bin again to strangle us at night.

yes very crustacean like whiich reminds me of tjhis :

aaaahahahahahahahahahah! Geniarse!

Oh God! Nightmare time!

Ooh! Cupboard creatures! They really do develop personality given time and a favourable environment :)

Beth - they root in the dark and go green in the light, but in the twilight who knows what they get up to....

ann> ooh thanks for that! I'll remember that next time i'm trying to grow potato creatures

Brilliant! .... love the potatobot Wars .....

Maybe you could green them off first in the light? Although, maybe the going green will inhibit the rooting process.... Hmmm, I feel an experiment coming on.
1. Take 3 potatoes of same age, size and condition (or ideally 9, so you can have 3 in each condition for the sake of reproducibility), and number them 1-3.
2. Place potatoes 1 and 2 under a daylight lamp for 1 week (? as long as it takes to go green). Place potato 3 in a dark, forgotten place such as Alfie's cupboard.
4. When potatoes 1 and 2 have gone green, place potato 1 into a separate dark cupboard with identical conditions to the cupboard of potato 3. (This is to prevent the potatoes from interfering with each other chemically, that would be another experiment...). Keep potato 1 in the light as a control to check that light really does inhibit rooting (you may get shoots?).
5. Forget about the potatoes for a while, and check back periodically to see which roots first, and whether or not the green potato is able to root at all, and if it does, does it root from a green bit?
Although really this should be done in space so that we don't have to worry about the effects of gravity...
I think I need another cup of tea.

excellent .. now go do it!

Yes, but as another control it may be a good idea to have an extra potato in the dark... let it root and then take it out and put it in the light to see if it goes green...

That is a good point. I did start off with 4 potato conditions but thought it might be getting a bit much for one experiment... There's so much you could ask of it - it may already have been done of course, I'm afraid I haven't checked the potato research literature, that may well be worth a look before embarking on the real thing. It would give a better idea of times needed for greening and rooting at least.
As much as I'd love to I shouldn't really be doing any potato experiments until I've finished the experiments I've been paid to do (though not anymore it seems) and found another job... Oh for potato-based procrastination :( One day, maybe.

Oh dear. It seems I may have been too hasty to ascribe rootiness. Dr Crickson very rightly points out that these are quite probably shoots, as they are growing in an upwardly direction and the potato doesn't need roots (yet) as it can live off the tuber. So the experiment should more properly be a study of how long it takes to shoot in lthe light and in the dark and to compare the morphology of the different shoot types. If a dark shooted potato is brought into the light can it ever produce normal leaves? Or would it always look a bit weird?

Ah, of course, shoots. If I had enough potatoes I might be tempted to experiment myself.

I swear these look like those electron microscope shots of those mites that suck on the juices at the roots of your eyelash follicles...

[*]

It seems so obvious now.
When the potatoes go green they become poisonous, but when they shoot without going green they must not be quite so poisonous...

How poisonous? Poisonous enough to make you ill? Or kill you dead?

Well, quite poisonous. Potatoes are in the same family as the nightshades so are capable of producing solanine, which is toxic . Depends on the dose I guess. The green colour itself is chlorophyll,( which we can cope with very well) but indicates that the potato has been exposed to light which increases the solanine production in the potato. So the green colour is an indicator of a more poisonous potato. Although it looks like it might be broken down by heating, so cooked potato might be OK? There was something on wikipedia about a possible link between dietary exposure to solanine through green potatoes (or potatoes infected with blight) and spina bifida, but I don't know the details. And really should stop thinking about potatoes and find a proper job. Right now...

*Senses scheming*

It's really not a nice smell when potato's turn into a liquid though.

Hmm, never managed to eat a raw potato.

You should be alright then. Just steer clear of all those raw potato-based snacks.

MEN !

Men are raw potato based snacks now?

I'm willing to risk it...

Sort of on topic and following on from what spiderbaby said... can any mobloggers clear up this minor disagreement I had wioth my boyfriend? I say raw potatoes are poisonous, he says I'm making it up. I'm sure I read that somewhere...

Kel - Raw spuds contain what are known as "resistant starches" which makes them very hard to digest - if you grate them, humans can probably eat them OK, provided they're not green or sprouting , but otherwise, no, not advised. Galloping flatulence & gastric discomfort is probably the worst in store, but hey, why volunteer for that?

Raw spud definitely not advised for dogs - if you've ever seen a dog having a black mess of intestine & spud removed, you'll never need another reason to keep dogs away from the veg cupboard.

Now, on to the phytotoxins...
Green & shooting spuds & all above-ground parts of potato plants contain the toxic glycoalkaloids solanine & chaconine. Peeling & cooking both reduce levels of toxins but do not eliminate toxicity. The amount of greeness/ sprouting is not a reliable guide to levels of toxicity & solanine (not sure about chaconine) is definitely cumulative, remaining in the body for well over 24 hrs. For this reason, it's best to avoid all green/ sprouting spuds as otherwise it's hard to know how much toxic material you may have ingested. It can take as little as one large or 4 normal sized spuds to provoke a reaction where glycoalkaloid levels are high.
Never feed green or sprouting spuds to animals either.

Spiderbaby - Solanine's a folate antagonist, so maybe that's the theoretical link with neural tube defects?

thank you!

So, those green-edged crisps? Unlikely to cause too much damage.

Ah, that might be it Hildegard. Thanks. I must have eaten a fair few dodgy spuds by now, so long as they're not all green (or liquid). I will take more care in future!