. Cyclopedia of farm crops. Farm produce; Agriculture. 514 PEANUT PEANUT PEANUT. Arachis hypogoea, Linn. Leguminosce. (Earth-nut, Ground-nut, Ground-pea, Goober, Pindar.) Figs 735-740. By L. a Corbctl. Of the "nuts" produced in the United States, the peanut is the best l' i#. Fig. 735. Peanut. Sterile showy flower above; forming pod of fertile flower below. in confections; but it has great impor- tance as a soil-renovator and forage. The product is reallv not a nut, however. It is a ripened pod, with edible seeds, of a plant very like the pea and bean. The peanut is annual, one foot
. Cyclopedia of farm crops. Farm produce; Agriculture. 514 PEANUT PEANUT PEANUT. Arachis hypogoea, Linn. Leguminosce. (Earth-nut, Ground-nut, Ground-pea, Goober, Pindar.) Figs 735-740. By L. a Corbctl. Of the "nuts" produced in the United States, the peanut is the best l' i#. Fig. 735. Peanut. Sterile showy flower above; forming pod of fertile flower below. in confections; but it has great impor- tance as a soil-renovator and forage. The product is reallv not a nut, however. It is a ripened pod, with edible seeds, of a plant very like the pea and bean. The peanut is annual, one foot or more high, more or less creeping in habit. The leaves are abruptly pinnate, with two pairs of leaflets and no tendril. The flowers are of two kinds: the male (.staminate) showy, and the female (pistillate) hidden or cleistogamoas flowers more or less clustered in the axils of the leaves. The stamens are nionadelphous, but the alternate ones are short. The male flowers soon wither and fall away, while the female flowers begin to grow rapidly by the extension of the receptacle and flower stem (stipe), soon curving toward the ground, where they bury themselves and ripen the pod entirely underground. History. Little was known of the history or culture of the peanut outside of a comparatively circumscribed area in southeastern Virginia prior to the Civil war. Even now the means of its advent on this territory is not clear. Circumstantial evidence points to the early slave trade as the most likely means by which the nut reached North America. Peanuts were used as staple food for the mainte- nance of slaves on the voyage across the Atlantic, and it is likely that this traffic was the means of bringing the peanut to this country early in its colonial history. This idea is given additional weight by the fact that the Carolina nut is very diff'erent in size from the Virginia or Spanish nut (Fig. 738) and is accredited an African origin. The Virginia nut is probably of African origin a
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