Discuss: Stalking the Wild Groundnut

I have been eating these delightful nuggets for years as tubers annually erode out of the banks along Merrymeeting Bay. As with any potato they benefit a lot from some salted herbs or other spicy additions. The juice they exude is incredibly sticky stuff that is extremely difficult to remove from pots and other utensils. I’ve used various solvents, abrasives and lots of elbow grease. It has made me wonder if native Americans used this pitch as a sealant or waterproofing. My guess is they must have. And the flowers are beutiful as well as delightfully fragrant. I found a couple last year as big as a tennis ball, a far bit bigger than the norm. Enjoy, but leave plenty behind for the future!

great article.  i just wanted to point out that Apios americana is listed 4th in Plants for a Future’s Top 20 because the list is in alphabetical order.

When agribusiness collapses, as it must somewhere around $150/bbl oil, we will need every possible human fuel source that can be grown near our large population centers.  Jerusalem artichokes and groundnuts can be grown with little preparation in anyone’s backyard.

I believe I read in Jon Krakower’s “Into the Wild” that the subject of the book (and movie), Chris McCandless, basically weakened and died because of mistaking a very similar, and toxic legume, for the groundnut.

Also, water hemlock can easily be mistaken for wild carrot—and hemlock kills quickly and without appeal.

It is great to get closer to the place we live—eating its fruits, drinking its water.  But most of us today are naive children when it comes to truly understanding our surrounding world.  As in the article on the Mayan garden, wild food is best approached with reverent and wise feet, and a prayer in the heart.

In simple English, know what you are eating before you put it in your mouth, and never eat a lot of a plant new to you, until you know how it will affect your body.

I would love to try growing some seeds/tubers… any idea how I can get them? I have looked unsuccessfully on the internet.
Maybe I just don’t know where to look?

We’ve been doing the same work in Malawi (Eastern Africa) since 1997 and have a dried food display that we use to help raise awareness about under utilized indigenous plants and animals.  We also use Permaculture in our lives and work.  At the moment I’m working with the Ministry of Education to integrate the ideas into the National Curriculum, which includes these foods.

I’d love to contact the author as we also are from Wisconsin and may re-locate there in the future.

Thanks for the motivating article, it is great to see my fellow country people moving in the right directions!

Ed,
I’m happy to hear from another groundnut eater. Thanks for adding your comments. Yes, the “juice” of the groundnuts is a curious substance. Scientists call it latex—it sticks and becomes rubbery just like synthetic latex—and speculate that it’s part of the plant’s defense against gnawing rodents. When scrubbing the latex off utensils and pots, I’ve had varying luck with soaps and vegetable oils. In general, I’ve found it’s best to remove it quickly, before it can dry.

Your question about whether it was ever used as glue or a waterproofing agent is a good one. A 1939 article, “The Groundnut as Used by the Indians of Eastern North America” by Gretchen Beardsley, mentions only culinary and medicinal uses of the plant, and this article seems exhaustive in its survey of sources from the 1630s to early 1900s. Still, that doesn’t mean there weren’t some uses that missionaries, settlers, and ethnobotanists missed!

Nicoel,
Yes, I see the ranking of 4th is alphabetical within the top 20 plants that Plants for a Future lists as the most promising. My mistake, and thanks for pointing it out.

lweisberg,
I also wondered whether the legume seeds that Chris McCandless ate were related to Apios americana. In any case, after Into the Wild was published, scientists confirmed that that plant’s seeds did not contain poison. Recently, Jon Krakauer revised his theory of what killed Chris. Here’s a quote from his 09/20/07 interview with Melissa Block on NPR’s All Things Considered: “I still believe he was killed by eating the seeds of the Eskimo potato plant, which isn’t known to be poisonous. But now I’ve come to believe after researching from journals of veterinary medicine that what killed him wasn’t the seeds themselves but the fact that they were damp and he stored them in these big Ziploc bags and they had grown moldy and the mold produces this toxic alkaloid called swainsonine.”

Your point about the potential for harm in foraging is excellent and so important. Taking a wild edibles workshop with an experienced guide is the probably best way for beginners to distinguish what’s edible from what’s dangerous or unpalatable. The last three Web sites listed under the “Learn More” sidebar to this online article will lead readers to information on such workshops.

D Courtnier,
The only source I’ve found for Apios americana tubers (other than the outdoors) is Dr. Blackmon. However, he informed me that researchers from two seed banks had recently requested samples of his germplasms in hopes of maintaining and eventually releasing the domesticated strains to the public. One was Mario Morales of the Medicinal Botanicals Program at Mountain State University in WV. See the program’s Web site at: http://www.mountainstate.edu/usda/

Stacia,
It sounds like you’re doing great work. You must be familiar with the work of Noel Vietmeyer, an outspoken champion of underutilized indigenous crops in Africa and Asia. He was also an early, enthusiastic supporter of the domesticated Apios and one of those who inspired Frieda’s to distribute them to grocery stores.

If you do re-locate to Wisconsin, be sure to check out the southwest corner of the state, where organic agriculture and natural building are thriving. Feel free to send the Orion editors your e-mail address, and they can forward it to me.

Thanls, Tamara, for this wonderful article, and I am glad that I could help you in composing it. I want all the readers to know that this was a labor of love that Tamara had incubating for a number of years.

A few comments.An Ojibwa woman told me, “White people don’t know how to cook that plant. It’s a slow-cook vegetable, something you put in the crock pot all day - you can’t just fry it up quick and eat it.” I wonder if this is the missing piece, why some people have gotten sick?

I’m not sure if hopniss is a Lenape name. I think it’s Algonquin. Ojibwa is in the Algonquin family, and the tuber in Ojibwa is “opin” and the plant is “opinashk,” which is very similar to the “opinavk” that our word “hopniss” is said to be corrupted from, according to Pehr Kalm, at least.

The sticky juice on hopniss is rubber.