3x More Protein Than Potatoes... Why America Banned This Native Food

What is Groundnut?

There is a tuber with three times the protein of a potato. It grows wild across 38 states. It saved the pilgrims from starvation in 1621. Native Americans cultivated it for thousands of years.

Then in 1654, colonists made it illegal for indigenous people to harvest it on English land. The penalty was public stocks. For a second offense, the punishment was whipping. By the 1800s, it had disappeared from American tables.

In the 1980s, Louisiana State University spent nearly a decade breeding superior varieties. They collected over 200 wild specimens from 19 states. They created 2,000 hybrid lines. Then the university pulled funding and the project was abandoned.

Today, only one country grows it commercially. Japan. Not the United States where the plant is native. There it is called Hado Mo and people have cultivated it for over 100 years.

This is the story of a survival crop that fed civilizations then was stolen then forgotten. The archaeological evidence begins along river banks and forest edges of eastern North America from Florida north to Canada and from the Atlantic coast west to Colorado. Dense concentrations of a perennial vine appear where indigenous settlements once stood. This is not a random distribution but deliberate cultivation.

The Shauny integrated it into three sisters gardens alongside corn and squash. The plant is a nitrogen fixer. It pulls nitrogen from the air and deposits it in the soil, fertilizing the heavy feeding squash and corn without external inputs. The system was self sustaining.

In 1613, French colonists at Port Royal ate the tubers to survive their first winter. In 1620, the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock. The pilgrims faced brutal, cold, unfamiliar land and no stored food. Half of them died that first winter.

The survivors owed their lives to Wanoag knowledge and to this plant. In 1623, Plymouth colony records state the pilgrims had only a small quantity of corn. They supplemented it with tubers gathered from riverbanks. The harvest festival of November 1621, regarded as the first Thanksgiving, likely included this plant at the table.

Without it, the colony would have starved. This is the ground nut, scientifically known as Apios Americana. The Lenipe people called it hopes. The Anisha called it mukwapinic meaning bare potato.

The plant is a perennial vine growing 3 to 10 ft long. It produces fragrant purple brown flowers in dense clusters from July to September. But the treasure is underground. Tubers.

They are connected in chains like beads on a string. They range from walnut size to small potato size. One plant can produce 20 to 50 tubers in a season. Now let us examine what happened after contact.

Historical Context & Discovery

The pilgrims learned to dig and cook ground nuts from the wanoag. The tubers became so valuable to colonial survival that settlers passed a law. In 1654, a town ordinance declared that if an Indian dug ground nuts on English land, he would be placed in the public stocks. For a second offense, he would be whipped.

This was not protection of property. This was theft of indigenous food systems on indigenous land. The colonists had been taught by Native Americans where ground nuts grew and how to prepare them. Then they criminalized Native Americans for harvesting the same plant on land the colonists now claimed as English.

By the 1700s, groundnut remained common in settler diets. They called it Indian potato, potato bean or groundnut. They boiled it, fried it, roasted it, and dried and ground it into flour. But the association with poverty and indigenous food marked it as primitive.

As industrial agriculture rose and European potatoes became standard, ground nut faded from American tables. In 1845, during the Irish potato famine, Europeans attempted to replace potatoes with Apio Americana. They imported it, tested it, then rejected it. The stated reason was that tubers took 2 years to reach harvestable size.

The vining habit made mechanized harvesting difficult and it did not fit industrial monoculture. The real issue was control. Ground nut is perennial. Once planted, it regrows every year without replanting.

The plant requires no fertilizer because it fixes its own nitrogen. Farmers cannot sell seed every year if the plant reeds itself. This is not a crop. This is food security.

For over a century, groundnut remained obscure. Then in 1985, Louisiana State University launched a domestication program. Dr. William Blackman and Dr.

Berthal Reynolds led the project. Their goals were larger tubacy, denser clusters, single season production, and steady productivity without trellising. By 1988, they had collected wild seeds and tubers from 210 plants across 19 states. They created over 2,200 hybrid lines.

53 genotypes were saved for further analysis. They tested lines across three locations. Several genotypes produced up to 3.3 lbs of tubers per plant. The cultivar LA85034 emerged as particularly promising.

The breeding program continued until the mid 1990s. Then funding was pulled and Dr. Blackman retired. The project ended and the superior varieties were never officially released.

Some individuals took specimens with them and a few cultivars survived. But the program was ultimately abandoned. This pattern is not unique. University breeding programs for underutilized native crops are routinely defunded.

Scientific Research & Nutritional Benefits

Sunchoke pawpaw pimmen ground nut. These plants do not fit commodity agriculture models. They are perennials and they require minimal inputs. There is no proprietary seed to sell, no fertilizer dependency, and no patentable traits.

Today, the largest germ plasm collection of Apios Americana cultivars is held at Iowa State University under Dr. Steven Cannon. Research continues, but commercial production in the United States does not exist. The only country that grows ground nut commercially is Japan.

In Japan, ground nut is called hodo or apios. The Japanese were already familiar with the native relative, occasionally eaten as emergency food. American groundnut was introduced during the Maji era from 1868 to 1912. The Japanese recognized its potential.

They domesticated it and they integrated it into agricultural systems. Today, it is valued as a starchy delicacy. Small commercial farms grow it. Grocery stores sell it.

Restaurants serve it. There is even a Japanese legend in Iomori Prefecture. A mother hands her daughter small tubers on her wedding day. She whispers that the daughter should plant them near the garden fence.

The tubers will provide nutritious food when she is pregnant and too tired to cultivate the rest of the garden. In North America, where groundnut is native, it remains virtually unknown. It is not sold in grocery stores. It is not taught in schools.

Meanwhile, Japan has turned it into a commercial success. Now, let us examine what is inside these tubers. This is where the suppression becomes deliberate. Ground nut tubers contain approximately 16 to 17% crude protein by dry weight.

Potatoes contain 5 to 6% protein. That is three times the protein content. This is nutritional superiority. The beans contain 25 to 30% crude protein comparable to soybeans.

The tubers are also an excellent source of calcium and iron. Recent research revealed something extraordinary. Groundnut tubers contain high levels of isoflavones, notably genine. These compounds are linked to decreased incidence of prostate cancer, breast cancer, and colon cancer.

Studies on hypertensive rats showed a 10% decrease in blood pressure when 5% of their diet consisted of groundnut tubers. Research on diabetic mice showed that consumption of groundnut flowers lowered blood glucose levels. This is not just food. This is functional nutrition with documented health benefits.

Plants for a future, a British organization that educates the public on edible and medicinal plants, ranks Apio Americana as the fourth most important plant in their database of 7,000 species. Fourth out of 7,000. Yet in the United States, it is classified as a weed. Cranberry farmers in the Pacific Northwest spray it with herbicides.

The University of Maine Agriculture Bulletin offers this solution. One way to remove the tubers would be to eat them, just as Native Americans and the pilgrims were accustomed to doing. The plant that saved colonists from starvation is now poisoned as a nuisance. Henry David Thorough wrote in Walden that with a little salt a hungry man could make a very palatable meal on them.

He was describing groundnut tubers. Thorough recognized them as a native staple. But even in his time 1854 ground nuts were fading from cultural memory. By the 20th century they were forgotten entirely by mainstream America.

The taste is sweet and nutty, similar to sweet potato, but with a finer texture. Tubers can be boiled, fried, baked, roasted, steamed, or mashed. They can be dried and ground into flour, and they store for several months under cool, dry conditions. The beans can be cooked like peas, and the flowers are edible.

There are considerations. A small percentage of people, estimated at 9 to 25%, experience gastrointestinal distress when eating ground nuts. The tubers contain protease inhibitors when raw, and these are toxic. Cooking denatures them.

Ground nuts must never be eaten raw. Start with small portions the first time. People allergic to latex should avoid ground nuts due to cross reactivity. But for those who tolerate them, ground nuts offer exceptional nutrition.

Modern Americans do not grow them not because they are difficult, but because they do not fit industrial models. They are too easy to grow, too self-sufficient, too productive without inputs. The ground nut is hardy in zones 3 through 10, covering most of the continental United States. It grows in full sun or partial shade.

It prefers moist soil but adapts to many conditions. It is drought tolerant once established. It requires no fertilizer because it fixes its own nitrogen. Colonists learned this system and used it to survive.

Then they criminalized the people who taught them and they stole the land where groundnuts grew. They passed laws making it illegal for Native Americans to harvest food on their own ancestral territories. Then they forgot the plant entirely and replaced it with crops that required purchased seed every year. This was not accidental.

It was a systematic erasure of self-sufficiency. Food independence is a threat to economic control. If people can grow perennial high protein food that receds itself and requires no fertilizer, they do not need to purchase food from corporations. They do not need the system.

In the 1980s, Louisiana State University attempted to bring ground nut back. They spent a decade developing superior varieties. They proved it could be domesticated for modern production. Then the budget was cut.

The program was abandoned. This is the same story as mess, as temporary beans, as every survival crop. Meanwhile, Japan succeeded where America abandoned. They took an American native plant and built a commercial industry around it.

They proved it works. But in the United States, groundnut is still classified as a weed, still sprayed with herbicides, still unknown to 99% of the population. The knowledge still exists. Small seed companies sell tubers from Louisiana State University breeding lines.

Permaculture growers cultivate it. The experimental farm network preserves cultivars. Folks like Nat Bradford, who saved the Bradford watermelon, have been selecting groundnut for 15 years. But this is grassroots preservation, not institutional support.

If groundnut were adopted widely, the implications would be profound. A perennial nitrogen fixing legume with three times the protein of potatoes. Tolerant of zones 3 through 10. Productive in partial shade, requiring no fertilizer, regrowing every year.

This is food sovereignty. The narrative that groundnut is too difficult to harvest, too slow to mature, too vining to manage is propaganda. These are features, not flaws. The vining habit allows it to utilize vertical space.

The spreading ryomes mean one planting creates an everex expanding food source. The Japanese have been growing it commercially for a century. They harvest it, they sell it, they eat it. The difficulty is not botanical.

The difficulty is ideological. Ground nut does not fit commodity models. It cannot be controlled. It cannot be patented.

How to Identify, Grow & Use Groundnut

It simply feeds people. That is not profitable enough. But the plant persists. It grows along river banks from Canada to Florida.

It climbs fences in suburban backyards. Anywhere there is moisture and sun, groundnut will grow. It survived colonial theft. It survived a century of neglect.

It survived herbicide campaigns. It is still here waiting to be remembered. The law of 1654 is still visible in our food system, not as written law, but as inherited structure. The criminalization of indigenous food sovereignty continues in agricultural subsidies for corn and soybeans, but not for native perennials.

In the defunding of university research on groundnut, and in endless funding for GMO crops, in the classification of groundnut as a weed instead of food. But that structure is failing. Top soil is depleting. Fertilizer costs are rising.

Climate chaos is accelerating. Industrial monocultures are collapsing. And in the cracks, perennials are returning. Ground nut is climbing fences, fixing nitrogen, feeding people who plant it.

The system cannot suppress what it cannot control. And it cannot control a plant that grows itself. If this vault opened something for you, subscribe to Naturelost Vault and hit the bell. Every like and every share helps preserve this wisdom.

The next vault opens soon.