Lake Maxinkuckee, Physical and Biological Survey 345 



spring and grow pretty rapidly. Coming up well along the rail- 

 road May 12. Blossoms from July till frost. Where it will thrive 

 this plant is well worthy of cultivation for ornament, and is sold 

 by some seedmen as the "tuberous rooted wistaria." 



462. HOG PEA-NUT; WILD PEA-NUT 



FALCATA COMOSA (L.) Kuntze 



Rather common in places; a large patch among the willows 

 down in the Inlet region near the green boathouse; common along 

 the south side of the road near Outlet Bay, and on the bank of 

 the lake near the Palmer House. 



This is a tall, slender twining vine with thin leaves and purple 

 blossoms, thriving best in rich black loam. It is an interesting 

 plant, bearing several kinds of blossoms. The upper blossoms, 

 which are rather pretty, give rise to thin pods resembling miniature 

 pea-pods and bearing small bean-like seeds which are prettily lined 

 and mottled with bluish purple. Underground are borne flowers 

 that never open, but which produce a brown hairy one-seeded pod 

 hardly as large as a cultivated pea. In hard ground these under- 

 ground pods form irregularly, rather resembling a miniature po- 

 tato in shape ; but in looser ground they are regular in shape, being 

 round in outline and slightly flattened laterally, that is, thick lens- 

 shaped. The seed, on being removed from this thin pod, resembles 

 a pea in shape. A cup-full of them thus shelled has an attractive 

 appearance, all of them being marked on the thin skin by longi- 

 tudinal stripings and mottlings which may be either pink or purple. 

 These peanuts have somewhat the same taste as the raw cultivated 

 peanuts. They were tried cooked, both roasted and boiled, and 

 although edible, and perhaps acceptable in times of unusual hunger 

 or need, formed a rather indifferent dish. They lack the oiliness 

 of the real peanut. A hog-peanut patch in the rich black soil along 

 the railroad by Plymouth, Indiana, and one near Fort Wayne, bore 

 considerable of underground fruit, and a fair quantity could be ob- 

 tained in a short time. It takes the whole summer to produce the 

 crop; the peanuts germinating in the spring and the fruit setting 

 on rather late in the summer. The underground fruit quickly 

 dries, and will probably not germinate if taken out of the ground 

 and kept in a dry place. Unlike the aerial pea it needs no resting 

 period, but if planted in a warm place will germinate and grow at 

 once. Some were dug in the fall of 1909, placed in a can of moist 

 earth and taken to Washington. It was found that they had germi- 

 nated in transit, they were therefore planted in pots and placed in 



