EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS 



thickets throughout a large part of the United States 

 and Canada from Ontario to Florida and westward 

 to the Missouri River basin. It is a climbing peren- 

 nial vine with milky juice and leaves composed of 

 usually 5 to 7 leaflets. To the midsunnner rambler 

 it betrays its presence by the violet-like fragrance 

 exhaled b}" bunchy racemes of odd, brownish-purple 

 flowers of the type of the pea. Neither history nor 

 tradition tells us what lucky Lidian first chanced 

 upon the pretty vine's prime secret, that store of 

 roundish tubers borne upon underground stems, 

 which made it so valuable to the red men that they 

 eventually took to cultivating it about some of their 

 "vdllages. Do not let the name Groundnut cause you 

 to confuse this plant with the one that yields the 

 familiar peanut of city street stands, which is quite 

 a different thing. The Groundnut is really no nut 

 at all but a starchy tuber, which, when cooked, tastes 

 somewhat like a white potato. Indeed, Dr. Asa 

 Gray expressed the belief that had civilization 

 started in the New World instead of the Old, this 

 would have been the first esculent tuber to be de- 

 veloped and would have maintained its place in 

 the same class with the potato. 



Narratives of white travelers in our American 

 wilderness bear abundant evidence to the Ground- 



3 



