WILD FLOWERS OF NEW YORK 153 



Groundnut; Wild Bean 

 Glycine apios Linnaeus 



Plate 1 17 



Stems slender, hairy or nearly smooth, with milky juice, climbing 

 over herbs and bushes to a height of several feet, from a perennial root- 

 stock of several necklace-shaped, edible tubers. Leaves pinnately com- 

 pound, five- to seven-f oliolate ; leaflets ovate to ovate-lanceolate, pointed 

 at the apex, rounded at the base, 1 to 3 inches long. Flowers brownish 

 purple, fragrant, about one-half of an inch long, in axillary racemes; 

 peduncles shorter than the leaves; rachis of the inflorescence knobby; 

 calyx two-lipped, the two lateral teeth very small, the two upper united 

 and short, the lower one long and acute; standard ovate or orbicular and 

 reflexed, wings obliquely obovate, adherent to the elongated, incurved 

 and at length twisted keel; pod narrow, straight or slightly curved, 2 to 

 4^ inches long and about one-fourth of an inch wide or less, many-seeded 

 and rather thick in texture. 



Moist thickets along streams, bottomlands, or low woods. New 

 Brunswick to Florida, west to Ontario, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas and 

 Texas. Flowering from July to September. 



Wild or Hog Peanut 



Falcata comosa (Linnaeus) Kuntze 



Plate n8a 



Stems very slender, simple or somewhat branched, twining and 

 climbing over herbs and shrubs, 1 to 6 feet long, more or less pubescent. 

 Leaves with three rhombic-ovate or broadly ovate leaflets pointed at the 

 apex, rounded at the base, 1 to 3 inches long. Flowers purplish or nearly 

 white in axillary, slender-stalked clusters or racemes. In the lower axils 

 are solitary, apetalous, fertile flowers. Calyx of the petaliferous flowers 

 four to five-toothed, tubular; the oblong wings of the corolla curved 

 and adherent to the recurved, blunt keel and inclosed by the erect, 



