History of Garden Vegetables. 429) 
resource against starvation. Thus Parkman! records that Bien-. 
court and his followers at Port Royal, in 1613, were scattered 
about the woods and shores digging ground-nuts; and the Pil- 
grims during their first winter were enforced to live on them. 
This plant was described and figured by Cornutus? in 1635, and 
is described by Clayton‘ in 1739. Although probably grown by 
Cornutus at Paris prior to 1635, yet it received no further atten- 
tion until again grown in 1849 and should it gain a foot-hold, 
its introduction would be scored to this latter date. 
J. Hammond Trumbull thinks the openauk of Hariot,® found in 
Virginia in 1584, to be this plant, “a kind of root of round form, 
some of the bigness of walnuts, some far greater, which are found 
in moist and marish grounds, growing many together one by another 
in ropes, or as though they were fastened with a string. Being 
boiled or sodden, they are very good meate.” Brereton,’ in his 
account of Gosnold’s voyage to New England in 1602, notes the 
“great store of ground-nuts” found on all the Elizabeth Islands. 
They grow “ forty together on a string, some of them as big as a 
hen’s egg.” Champlain, 1605-6, observed that the Indians about 
Nauset harbor probably had “force des racines qu’els cultivent, 
lorsquelles ont le gout d’artichaut,” and it is to these roots that 
Lescarbot® alludes, west and south of Maine, “grosses comme 
naveux, tres excellentes a manger, ayans un gout retirant aux 
cardes, mais plus agreable, lesquelles plantus multiplient en telle 
facon que c’est merveille.”” Kalm," at a later period, 1749, states. 
that it grows in the meadows along the Delaware, and the roots 
eaten by the Indians. He adds that the Swedish colonists eat them 
for want of bread, and that some of the English still eat them 
instead of potatoes. 
1 Pioneers of France, 274. 
* Young. Chron, of the Pilg., 329. 
*Cornutus. Canad. Plant. Hist., 1635, 200. 
* Gronovius. Virg., 1762, 107. 
5 Heuze. Les Pl. Alim., ii., 548. 
° Heriot. Hakl. Voy., iii. 
"Brereton. Purchas., 1651, iv. 
° Champlain. Voy., 1632, 84. 
°? Lescarbot. Hist. de la Nouv. France, 1612, 840. 
E a quoted from Gray and Trumbull, Am, Jour. of 8c., May, 1877,. 
n Kalm. Trav., 1770-1, ii., 96. 
