Marketer of Lumper Spud Has His Eye on U.S.

BOSTON —  The potato whose blight launched an exodus of Irish is now taking root in America.

The lumper--the most popular spud in Ireland at the time of the 19th-Century famine--is being grown on American soil for the first time.

“I’m holding history,” says Tom Stones, a British microbiologist, caressing the lumps of a small Irish lumper.

Stones is responsible for bringing American farmers two strains of Irish potato--the lumper and the smoother, rosier spud known as Kerr’s pink. He’s pushing his products in Boston because he recently signed a sales deal with Shaw’s, a New England supermarket chain.

A few weeks ago, Stones brought some lumpers down to Mr. Dooley’s, an Irish pub in the city’s financial district. He and the pub’s owner say patrons ate the potatoes raw and remembered their ancestry.

“We had big Irish guys in here going like this,” Stones says, wiping an imaginary tear from his eye.

On Thursday, the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, Stones was back at Dooley’s, leaning on the bar dispersing a little potato history:

Lumpers were the most popular “praties” in Ireland until 1845, when a fungus blight wiped out the crop and caused a famine that killed nearly 750,000 people and led 1.6 million Irish to emigrate to the United States.

The lumper mostly disappeared, but Stones said he found a few growing in Scotland. He spent the past three years ridding the vegetable of viruses so it could pass U.S. customs quarantine and be planted in the new world.

Today, lumpers and Kerr’s pink potatoes are growing in Hatfield, Mass., Florida and North Carolina. They should be on supermarket shelves by the end of April.

Shaw’s supermarket spokesman Bernard Rogan says he hopes the lumpers will appeal to new Irish immigrants hungry for a taste of the old country. In Europe, he explains, a potato isn’t just red or white. Discerning shoppers go for specific varieties.

The difference between potatoes surprisingly isn’t taste, but texture. When cooked, American potatoes are firm and lumpy, while Irish potatoes are fluffy, as if they’ve already been mashed.