Why are plant buds called 'eyes'? I was reading the etymology of the Latinate English verb 'inoculate' which contains the following part that generated the question entitled above: > [...] _inoculare_ "graft in, implant a bud or **eye** of one plant into another," from in- "in" (see in- (2)) + oculus "bud," originally " **eye** " (see eye (n.)). The OED confirms 'eye' as a synonym of 'bud,' but I doubt that 'potato buds' generated this meaning because it already existed in Classical Latin that (I am assuming) South Americans did not speak in the 1500s when they introduced potatoes to the Spaniards.

Just take a look at a potato and observe each of its eyes. You will see that each of them has two parts:

1) An "eyebrow" : this is a vestigial leaf

2) A small bud in the axil of that leaf

Thus, the two of them together form an eye + eyebrow

The eyes are not evenly distributed in a potato plant. One side may have just one or two but the other side will have lots of them. This is because that is the growing spot!

Examples:

![Eyes of a potato](