Is this a groundnut? Anyone?
Are these photos of the ever-elusive Apios americana?
I found this particular plant growing at Payne’s Prairie:
It was in a swampy area at the edge of a lake, just off the boardwalk so I couldn’t easily go rooting around for tubers. Plus, I don’t really like to do that sort of things in state parks… I’d rather leave all the vegetation alone for the birds, bees, beasts and tourists.
The vines had a reddish cast to them and seemed delicate. This is one of those plants I’ve been trying to track down for a while. I’m pretty certain this is a groundnut… but I just don’t know for sure.
Help me, loyal readers. You’re my only hope.
13 responses to “Groundnut plant – or not?”
Looks like Apios Americana to me. Must dig and see.
Are you trying to get me arrested?
Yeah, I would say it is. Up north in NY, the new shoots have a little hair on the stems, so that might help. The leaves and veins match too.
Very helpful, thank you.
It actually does not quite look like it to me–there are a lot of vines that have very similar leaf patterns (even wisteria looks sort of like that); flowers or tubers would help nail it–but you probably can't go digging there.
It looks a lot like wisteria to me. Can you go back there and look at the flowers when it blooms?
Yeah. Wisteria is a relative, making ID difficult, particularly since I haven't experienced Apios americana up close.
I'm going to go back and look.
It looks exactly like wisteria. Is it climbing the trees or anything around? If not, it is probably not wisteria. Wisteria grew 60+ feet into the trees around my house.
That's the problem. Since I've never seen a ground nut in person, I can't tell. It is starting to climb, but ground nuts are also climbers. Sigh.
The leaves look right, the terrain sounds right, I'm thinking ID is correct.
I have a garden in town with both hog peanut and Indian ground nut… Property owner has no concept of how lucky she is… Bringing the plants out to my house means container gardening lest the voles eat my plants… Much more difficult….
See this post is a bit dated, were you able to go back and figure it out? It looks like the ones I have growing, but I’ve just started (it grows fast from the tubers, but haven’t had any luck propagating from seed).
No, I could never figure it out. But I got some actual Apios americana tubers a few weeks ago and they’re growing shoots. We’ll compare soon.