365 urban species: #280: Groundnut.

[urbpan]

Photos by urbpan. Location: on the rhododendron shrubs in the TJ Maxx parking lot, Allston.

Urban species #280: Groundnut Apios americana

One of the ways this project has been good for me, is that I am constantly scrutinizing every living thing I see, and trying to determine what it is. If I see something unfamiliar, it immediately becomes a quest, a mission to identify and understand. Of course, this was something I was prone to do before this year, but the 365 Urban Species project lends a sense of urgency to my natural desire to know the living things sharing the city with me. Another benefit has been a heightened alertness of the passing of time, and of the cycle of the year. When I encountered this flower I thought that I was done seeing new flowers for the year, and that the remaining days would find me hurrying to write about trees before their last leaves fell, and searching out insects on the warmer winter days.

I was surprised again, when I learned that this plant is native to our area. Surely a creeping weed sprawled on the rhododendron shrubs in the parking lot of a strip mall is an invasive--but no. Groundnut is a climbing legume, naturally found east of the rockies. Both the seedpods and the starchy roots of the plant are edible, and were used by Native Americans. There are apparently plans afoot to develop a cultivated variety for food production.

Comments

[phlogiston-5.livejournal.com]

One of my favorites!

I painted a picture of one a while back.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Wonderful! Thanks for posting it!

[phlogiston-5.livejournal.com]

No problemo!

[martianmoons.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you would consider posting other works of yours, or maybe you have? This one is so nice!

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

that's beautiful!

[phlogiston-5.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Glad you like it!

You're photos in this project are beautiful too!

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

thank you very much!

[ndozo.livejournal.com]

That is lovely!

[elizabeth-rv.livejournal.com]

I read somewhere that groundnut was an important fall food source for Massachusetts Natives; when the colonies came in and started eating them too, the supply started to wane and the colonists made it illegal for the Natives to eat them. Sheesh.

These started popping up in my backyard last year, and I dug up the roots to taste them, they were sort of like a cross between a tiny potato and jerusalem artichoke, or a sunchoke but not quite as tasty.

[bezigebij.livejournal.com]

I have this growing near my patio. The flowers smell so good.

Native, pretty, and edible? Sign me up!

[interfecta.livejournal.com]

Does anyone know where I might be able to get seeds for this, other than the wild(a native-plants seed exchange, perhaps)? I don't know of anywhere it grows in my area, but this would be a great addition to the native plants in my little rooftop/fire escape garden.

[martianmoons.livejournal.com]

I have started looking at plants/weeds differently since reading 365 Urban Species. I often do not know what they are, but I definitely pay more attention and look closely now, realizing each has a story! :)

Thoreau on the groundnut

[(Anonymous)]

This is from the chapter "Housewarming" in Walden.

Digging one day for fishworms, I discovered
the groundnut (Apios tuberosa) on its string, the potato of the
aborigines, a sort of fabulous fruit, which I had begun to doubt if
I had ever dug and eaten in childhood, as I had told, and had not
dreamed it. I had often since seen its crumpled red velvety blossom
supported by the stems of other plants without knowing it to be the
same. Cultivation has well-nigh exterminated it. It has a sweetish
taste, much like that of a frost-bitten potato, and I found it better
boiled than roasted. This tuber seemed like a faint promise of
Nature to rear her own children and feed them simply here at
some future period. In these days of fatted cattle and waving
grain-fields this humble root, which was once the totem of an
Indian tribe, is quite forgotten, or known only by its flowering
vine; but let wild Nature reign here once more, and the tender
and luxurious English grains will probably disappear before a
myriad of foes, and without the care of man the crow may carry
back even the last seed of corn to the great cornfield of the
Indian's God in the southwest, whence he is said to have
brought it; but the now almost exterminated ground-nut will
perhaps revive and flourish in spite of frosts and wildness,
prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient importance
and dignity as the diet of the hunter tribe. Some Indian Ceres or
Minerva must have been the inventor and bestower of it; and
when the reign of poetry commences here, its leaves and string
of nuts may be represented on our works of art.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

i took this today: