Groundnut
Apios americana
Also known as: American Potato Bean
Groundnut is a twining legume of moist woodland edges and streambanks that produces a string of starchy tubers along its underground runners, and those tubers were a staple food across eastern North America — the crop that reportedly carried the Pilgrims through their first winters. They taste something like a roasted sweet potato and carry roughly three times the protein of a potato, and they can also be dried and ground into a flour for thickening or bread. Tubers form in the first year but take two or three seasons to reach a worthwhile size, and autumn is when they are best. Clusters of fragrant purple-red pea flowers appear in late summer, unusual and easy to miss because the vine threads through other plants rather than standing on its own. It fixes nitrogen and it is a larval host for silver-spotted skipper. In a small garden it is best given a trellis of its own, since a vine of this reach will lean on whatever it finds.
- Family
- Fabaceae
- Type
- vine
- Lifespan
- perennial
- Height
- 10–15 ft
- Spacing
- 2–5 ft apart
- Light
- shade
- Soil moisture
- moist
- Soil pH
- acidic, neutral
- Bloom
- July, August, September
- Bloom colors
- red, pink, purple
- Wildlife value
- butterflies, larval host
- Landscape uses
- hedge or screen
- Native states
- AL, AR, CO, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VA, VT, WI, WV