LVI 
PLANTS THAT BURY NUTS 
I SN'T IT ODD that certain plants outdo the squirrel 
in burying nuts against the time of need! 
Take the peanut, for instance. The fact that it is for 
sale at baseball games is due to the habit of the plant that 
bears it — a member of the bean family — of burying its 
fruits. 
The peanut plant is a bushy growth that looks much 
like clover and has yellow blossoms. It grows as clover 
might, until these blossoms fall off. Then it does a 
strange thing. It sends each of these low branches down¬ 
ward until it touches the ground. They do not stop there, 
but bore into the earth. Sometimes a branch tip digs in 
to a depth of three or four inches. 
After hiding away in this manner, the tips where the 
flowers bloomed begin to develop pods. Safe beneath the 
ground these pods grow until they become the peanuts of 
commerce. 
This business of assuring seed for a future crop is very 
important to plants. There is a certain wild bean of this 
group, known as the “ hog peanut/' that takes the trouble 
to develop one crop of seed beneath the ground and an¬ 
other on its branches. The underground crop assures 
next year’s growth on the old homesite, while the beans 
in the branches have a chance to pioneer a bit and start 
colonies far afield. 
There are other plants with underground branches that 
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