PEANUT  Arachis hypogae

Every elephant’s favorite legume, the peanut is not a nut, nor is it a pea, although it is related to the pea family. Sometimes called the groundnut, the peanut somewhat resembles clover, its shorter relative, with bright green leaves, yellow flowers, and multiple stalks.  The peanut grows in a most curious manner. It puts forth flowers low on the stem. As the flowers fall, the stem on which the pod forms, known as the peg, droops down toward the soil. Then the peg pokes itself into the ground and there the pod ripens, forming peanuts within the shell.

The peanut is native to South America, probably from the lowlands of present-day Bolivia. The abundance of wild varieties in this region points to the plant’s origins there.

Domesticated plants were growing in Brazil and on islands in the Caribbean about 5000 years ago. The peanut also flourished in the coastal areas of Peru. Archaeologists have unearthed broad plazas littered with ancient peanut shells, much like a baseball stadium after a game.

In the 1500’s, Portuguese ships carried peanuts to plant in slave-trading outposts in West Africa. The plants provided ample, nutritious food for Africans shipped back across the Atlantic to work colonial plantations as slaves.

Today China and India are world peanut powers. In the U.S., Georgia grows over half the country’s supply of the powerful legume.
 
 

Jimmy Carter peanut wind-up toy.

Peanut vendor in India sits in front of a poster featuring peanut-growing U.S. president, Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter