Apios americana
Encyclopedia
Apios americana, sometimes called the potato bean, hopniss, Indian potato or groundnut (but not to be confused with other plants sometimes known by the name groundnut) is a perennial
vine
native to eastern North America
, and bears edible bean
s and large edible tuber
s. It grows to 3–4 m long, with pinnate leaves
8–15 cm long with 5–7 leaflets. The flower
s are red-brown to purple, produced in dense raceme
s. The fruit
is a legume (pod) 6–12 cm long.
The tubers are crunchy and nutritious, with a high content of starch
and especially protein
. The plant was one of the most important food plants of pre-European North America, and is now being developed for domestication
.
Perennial plant
A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives for more than two years. The term is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter lived annuals and biennials. The term is sometimes misused by commercial gardeners or horticulturalists to describe only herbaceous perennials...
vine
Vine
A vine in the narrowest sense is the grapevine , but more generally it can refer to any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent, that is to say climbing, stems or runners...
native to eastern North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
, and bears edible bean
Bean
Bean is a common name for large plant seeds of several genera of the family Fabaceae used for human food or animal feed....
s and large edible tuber
Tuber
Tubers are various types of modified plant structures that are enlarged to store nutrients. They are used by plants to survive the winter or dry months and provide energy and nutrients for regrowth during the next growing season and they are a means of asexual reproduction...
s. It grows to 3–4 m long, with pinnate leaves
Leaf
A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....
8–15 cm long with 5–7 leaflets. The flower
Flower
A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs...
s are red-brown to purple, produced in dense raceme
Raceme
A raceme is a type of inflorescence that is unbranched and indeterminate and bears pedicellate flowers — flowers having short floral stalks called pedicels — along the axis. In botany, axis means a shoot, in this case one bearing the flowers. In a raceme, the oldest flowers are borne...
s. The fruit
Fruit
In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...
is a legume (pod) 6–12 cm long.
The tubers are crunchy and nutritious, with a high content of starch
Starch
Starch or amylum is a carbohydrate consisting of a large number of glucose units joined together by glycosidic bonds. This polysaccharide is produced by all green plants as an energy store...
and especially protein
Protein
Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...
. The plant was one of the most important food plants of pre-European North America, and is now being developed for domestication
Domestication
Domestication or taming is the process whereby a population of animals or plants, through a process of selection, becomes accustomed to human provision and control. In the Convention on Biological Diversity a domesticated species is defined as a 'species in which the evolutionary process has been...
.