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The peanut, or groundnut (Arachis hypogaea), is a species in the legume Fabaceae native to South America, Mexico and Central America. [1] It is an annual herbaceous plant growing to 30 to 50 cm (1 to 1.5 ft) tall. The leaves are opposite, pinnate with four leaflets (two opposite pairs; no terminal leaflet), each leaflet 1 to 7 cm (? to 2¾ in) long and 1 to 3 cm (? to 1 inch) broad. The flowers are a typical peaflower in shape, 2 to 4 cm (¾ to 1½ in) across, yellow with reddish veining. After pollination, the fruit develops into a legume 3 to 7 cm (1 to 2 in) long, containing 1 to 4 seeds, which forces its way underground to mature. The plant's name derives from a combination of the morphemes pea and nut, causing some confusion as to the nature of the fruit. In the botanical sense the fruit of the peanut plant is a woody, indehiscent legume and not a nut. The word pea describes the edible seeds of many other legumes in the Fabaceae family, and in that sense, a peanut is a kind of pea. Although a peanut is not a nut, in the culinary arts peanuts are utilized similarly to nuts. Peanuts are also known as earthnuts, goobers, goober peas, pindas, jack nuts, pinders, manila nuts, and monkey nuts. (The last of these is often used to mean the entire pod.) The domesticated peanut is an amphidiploid or allotetraploid, meaning that it has two sets of chromosomes from two different species. The wild ancestors of the peanut were thought to be A. duranensis and A. ipaensis, a view recently confirmed by direct comparison of the peanut's chromosomes with those of several putative ancestors.[1] This domestication might have taken place in Argentina or Bolivia, where the wildest strains grow today. In fact, many pre-Columbian cultures, such as the Moche, depicted peanuts in their art.[2]
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