A SUPPOSED EQUIVALENT FOR THE POTATO. 



145 



American Indians, is a small trailing, tuberous perennial, with 

 pinnated leaves, narrow lanceolate leaflets, and small brownish 

 purple flowers, rather sweet-scented, and growing in axillary- 

 racemes, which are shorter than the leaves. 



It is described by North American botanists as growing in 

 damp, rich soils, along the margins of swamps in Carolina 

 {Elliott, Fl. Carol., ii. 232), and in moist shady places from 

 Canada to Florida, west to Missouri ( Torrey and Gray, Flora 

 of North America, i. 282) ; but Pursh asserts that it inhabits 

 hedges and mountain meadows from Pennsylvania to Carolina 

 (FL Amer. Sept. ii. 473). Its roots, that is to say, its tubers, 

 are described by Elliott as small, and as having formed an 

 article of food to the aborigines ; Nuttall calls them " oblong 

 cylindrical tubers, edible and farinaceous, much like those of 

 Lathyrus tuberosus, sold in some of the German markets, and 

 rarely larger, though very numerous " ( Genera of North Ame- 

 rican Plants, ii. 113) ; Pursh is the only author that I can find 

 who speaks of them differently ; he says that the roots " some- 

 times grow to an enormous size." 



The plant itself is no stranger to our gardens. It is figured 

 in the Botanical Magazine, t. 1198, and in other works. A 

 rude woodcut, indeed, is to be found as early as 1640 in Par- 

 kinson's Theatrum, fol. 1062, at which time the plant was cul- 

 tivated in England under the name of " Terrce glandes Ame- 

 ricance sive Virginians — Virginia Earthnuts." The latter 

 appellation seems to indicate in what estimation the plant was 

 then held ; it was regarded as a mere curiosity, with a " tuberous 

 browne roote, which multiplies itself into sundry others." 



As it is the tubers which some suppose likely to take the 

 place of the potato, the annexed cut has been prepared to show 

 what they are, and how they are formed. A full-grown old 

 tuber (a) is as large as a Golden Pippin Apple, or a Nonpareil ; 

 it has a firm, rather hard, fleshy texture, is roundish in form, 

 and bears irregularly a number of tubercles on its surface. 

 These tubercles are eyes or buds ; some of them remain dor- 

 mant ; others, especially those near the upper end of the tuber, 

 push into slender underground runners, which, after advancing a 

 short distance, swell, then contract and lengthen again, then 

 swell, and so proceed during the season of growth, until a string 

 not very unlike a rude necklace is formed, as at b, b. Towards 

 the end of the season these swellings diminish, or even disappear, 

 and then a slender, cord-like, underground woody stem is all 

 that is formed. The swellings, b, b, are young oval tubers, each 

 furnished with an eye or two at the upper end. In a second 

 season these strings of tubers enlarge considerably, form more 

 eyes at their sides, become rounder, and assume such an appear- 



VOL. II. JL 



