It is believed that American groundnut may have been shipped to Europe as early as 1597. It was listed in 1885 as a European garden crop. In 1845 it was evaluated as a possible alternative potato crop in Ireland during the Great Famine. These early introductions to Europe appear to have resulted in little or no assimilation of the new food into the European diet. A primary reason for this lack of assimilation was that the two-year cycle for an acceptable tuber yield did not match the cropping systems that were familiar to Europeans.