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The effort on wild potatoes, which wraps up this month, has yielded a collection representing 39 species from six nations: Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Chile.

“It’s those genes from the wild potatoes. You never know what you could find,” he said.

Krakauer suggests in his book that he was poisoned by a toxic alkaloid on wild potato seeds that he ate.

We had lunch along the creek—stewed mussels and wild potatoes.

McCandless kept journals and photographs of his quest, up to his last few hours when he knew that he would die of poisoning from seeds of a wild potato plant.