He knows that Hitler and Stalin were not strange tubers that somehow grew naturally from the eastern earth.

NEWYORKER: Faces, Places, Spaces

Squat and knobby, the tubers aren't artichokes at all, but part of a species of sunflower that grows underground.

WSJ: Michael Anthony's Silken Sunchoke Soup | Slow Food Fast

As Peru's rich cuisine becomes better known abroad, demand for these tubers could grow, reckons Luis Carranza, the economy minister.

ECONOMIST: Making the most of potato patrimony

As a girl, Chase, I always did get tubers and tumors confused.

NEWYORKER: Lostronaut

It took another two years to test the transgenic tubers in greenhouses and yet another two years to obtain the necessary permits from Kenya to plant the crops for field testing.

FORBES: Millions Served

Last year Joe Munyaneza, an entomologist at the Yakima Agricultural Research Laboratory in Washington state, found that tubers from plants exposed to these insects showed typical zebra-chip symptoms, while those from unexposed plants had none.

ECONOMIST: Plant disease

Groaningly titled SPUDS (Synthetic Personnel Using Dielectric Substitution), the tubers apparently replicate how airborne signals are bounced and absorbed by real-life passengers, but without the need for Boeing to offer complimentary snacks or tiny drinks during testing.

FORBES: Boeing Replaces Humans With Potatoes: No, Nothing To Do With The Irish

Setting out on an ocean voyage, with water in gourds and pounded tubers tied up in leaves, he would point his canoe into the right slant of wind, and then along a path between a rising star and an opposite, setting one.

ECONOMIST: Mau Piailug