SC - Spanish-English-Latin Plant Glossary

[Decker, Terry D.]

> --- "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
> wrote:
> > This is a place to be careful of usage.  Groundnut
> > is a general word.  In
> > British usage, it commonly refers to the peanut
> > (Arachis hypogaea), but in
> > American usage, it often refers to Apios americana,
> > a vine with an edible
> > tuber found in eastern North America.
> > 
> > Bear
> 
> Perhaps you should write to Alan Davidson about this.
> 
> Huette

Perhaps, but the Oxford Companion to Food is a British publication and
should be allowed British usage.  While we're on the subject let me dredge
some things about groundnuts and peanuts out of my notes.

Apios americana (AKA Apios tuberosa) also puts in an appearance in the great
potato debate and is identified as a ground nut.  To quote Sophie Coe's
America's First Cusines"

p.21) "There was a flurry of descriptions of the potato in the herbals of
the late sixteenth century. It was at this time that the British botanist
Gerard planted the seeds, or perhaps one should say the potato eyes, of
trouble when he confused 'Solanum tuberosum' from South America with 'Apios
tuberosa', the ground nut, which was eaten by Indians and early colonists in
Virginia. For years the English-speaking world called 'Solanum tuberosum'
the Virginia potato and thought it came from Virginia and had been
domesticated there, even though there were no wild potatoes to be found
there, nor any domesticated ones either."  


She probably got her information from Wight, W.F.; Origin, introduction and
primative culture of the potato. Proceedings of the Third Annual Meeting of
the Potato Association of America, Nineteen Sixteen; 35-52, 1917.  
 
"The idea that the potato was introduced from Virginia into England, is,
however, so prevalent in literature that it should have some consideration,
even though the claim is not made that the potato was native to Virginia.
Few, in fact, have believed that it was cultivated by the Indians previous
to the era of European exploration and settlement; and no evidence has ever
been brought forward, so far as I am aware, in support of such a contention.
The conclusion in regard its introduction from Virginia rests solely on the
assumption that the root (called by the Indians Openauk), described by
Thomas Hariot in A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia,
first printed in London in 1588, is the potato; and is also the plant
described by Gerard in his Herball issued in 1598. Hariot says: "These roots
are found in moist and marshy grounds, growing many together in ropes as
though they were fastened by string." He states that they grew naturally or
wild,  
which would be improbable if they were potatoes introduced after the
discovery. The description also applies better to Apios tuberosa, the ground
nut, than it does to the potato. Furthermore, the Indians would scarcely
have had a distinctive name for a plant so recently introduced."

For information on the American groundnut try:
http://www.scs.leeds.ac.uk/pfaf/groundnt.html

http://gardenbed.com/A/394.cfm  

And now, a few comments on peanuts:

While the Oxford Companion states that groundnuts (peanuts) were first grown
in Peru, Hammons (Hammons, R.O., 1994, The origin and history of the
groundnut. In J. Smartt (Ed), The Groundnut Crop. A Scientific Basis for
Improvement. New York: Chapman and Hall.) places the first probable
domestication of groundnuts in the valleys of the Panana and Paraguay river
systems in the Grain Chaco area of South America (west of Sao Paulo,
Brazil).

That the peanut was brought back by Columbus is probably correct since
Francisco Oviedo in his Natural History of the West Indies (1527) states
that peanuts were an abundant crop in Hispaniola.

And just to throw a monkey wrench in the works, there is an anomalous,
10,000 year old fossilized peanut which was found in Chlien-shan-yang in
China reported in Chang, Kwang-Chih. The Archaeology of Ancient China. New
Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1968.  There doesn't appear to be
any corroborating evidence about peanuts being grown or used in China at
such an early date, so this remains a questionable anomaly.


And after all this, I'm still not any closer finding the true origin of
peanut soup.

Bon Chance

Bear