Apios, the riverbank dangler

I’ve shown photos of the flowers of Apios americana from my backyard many times on the blog though the tubers rarely have been given a chance to shine so with the floods waters gone and the riverbank visible here we see the easiest way to locate where groundnuts usually grow in good numbers though they rarely flower or have much leaf growth.

Often there will be many strung together on a line.

More a few feet a way.

Apios americana is known to grow larger tubers where it can mingle amongst other roots in moist soil. I find it both flowers and tubers well with daylilies. A photo of flowers in August and today a fresh tuber the size of a medium potato. Groundnut was a popular food for thousands of years in Eastern North American, there are many online sites which can tell you about its history, nutrition value and other interesting stuff. One thing I find interesting is it is a food you can gather anytime the ground isn’t frozen or you may even gather them then if the riverbank still has some danglers.

Here is what I may gather soon unless I stumble upon something else that draws my attention. Here we see elderberry very close to flowering and also wild radish pods, these little ones here tasted quite good. ciao

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Apios americana flowers

In my (wild edible plants) page I ‘m adding a few  Apios Americana flower photos as these flowers are rather pleasant to the eye as well as being one of our better wild tuber plants.

This was an important staple food in some parts of North America long ago.

Easy to notice this plant when the flowers are on these vines though in the fall I usually become aware of their presence by seeing groundnut tubers dangling from washed out river banks, this far north I have never noticed seed pods developing on this plant.

Here if you click on the photo you will see the Apios americana vines climbing over these spent Daylily flower stocks with a bed of Jerusalem Artichoke in the background, so we have 3 good tuber plants together in this one. ciao