CHAPTER III 



MORPHOLOGY , GENETICS AND 

 BREEDING 



By 



WALTON C. GREGORY, BEN W. SMITH AND 

 JOHN A. YARBROUGH^ 



Beginning with Oviedo's (47) account of the West Indies published in 

 1535 and Schmidel's (64) description of his travels in the La Plata Basin 

 during the ye^rs 1534 to 1554, the reader of the peanut literature is con- 

 fronted with works in Japanese, Chinese, Dutch, Danish, German, 

 French, Bulgarian, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Portugese, and English. 

 Here and there, keen observers have recorded their findings regarding the 

 structure and development of the peanut plant, only to have them buried 

 in the passage of time by an accumulation of inaccuracy and trivia. 

 These inaccuracies have been doubly impressed upon the writers 

 who find that the 77 titles listed at the end of this chapter omit little 

 indeed of the information contained in the 700-800 references at their 

 disposal. 



Prior to 1949 we have found only a single description (which was 

 wrong!) of the morphology and development of the seed and seedling, 

 only two inadequate descriptions of the internal reproductive morphology 

 of the peanut, and only a few correct accounts of the relationship between 

 the aerial flower and the subterranean fruit. In 1569 Monardes (45) was 

 so confused by the subterranean occurrence of peanut fruits that he 

 failed to associate these with the plant at all ! A century later Marggraf 

 (43) illustrated the fruits as growing on the roots! The first accurate 

 description of the peanut flower was pubhshed by Poiteau (52) in 1806 

 and confirmed by Richard in 1823 (58), but Bentham's (10) erroneous 



1 Walton C. Gregory is Professor of Agronomy, North Carolina State College, Ben W. Smith is 

 Associate Professor of Agronomy, North Carolina State College, and John A. Yarborough is 

 Professor of Biology, Meredith College. 



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