Rambling along the ground and on bushes near waterways in the Ozarks is a plant once beloved by the native tribes who lived in this area. Hopniss, also known as groundnut, was also beloved of Henry David Thoreau, who praised it thus in Walden:
“Digging one day for fish-worms I discovered the ground-nut (Apios tuberosa) {Note: the botanical name is now Apios americana] on its string, the potato of the aborigines, a sort of fabulous fruit, which I had begun to doubt if I had ever dug and eaten in childhood, as I had (been) told, and not dreamed it. I had often since seen its crimpled red velvety blossom supported by the stems of other plants without knowing it to be the same.
Cultivation has well-nigh exterminated it. It has a sweet-ish taste, much like that of a frost-bitten potato, and I found it better boiled than roasted. This tuber seemed like a faint promise of Nature to rear her own children and feed them simply here at some future period. In these days of fatted cattle and waving grain-fields this humble root, which was once the totem of an Indian tribe, is quite forgotten, or known only by its flowering vine; but let wild Nature reign here once more, and the tender and luxurious English grains will probably disappear before a myriad of foes, and without the care of man the crow may carry back even the last seed of corn to the great corn-field of the Indian’s God in the southwest, whence he is said to have brought it; but the now almost exterminated ground-nut will perhaps revive and flourish in spite of frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient importance and dignity as the diet of the hunter tribe. Some Indian Ceres or Minerva must have been the inventor and bestower of it; and when the reign of poetry commences here, its leaves and string of nuts may be represented on our works of art.”
Two winters ago I was blessed to find some hopniss tubers on a washed-out river bank, and was able to get one of them to grow on an arbor in my yard. They make a lovely vine with their reddish-brown blossoms. The photo below shows where beans usually grow from the blossoms. Our summer has been hot and dry, so most of them have aborted. Hopefully we will get a few to try before the frost comes! The young beans are edible cooked like a green bean, and the leaves can also be cooked as a green. Of course, they are most well-known for their tubers, which are a tasty and welcome source of starch in winter-time.
Do you have Hopniss growing near you? Have you ever tried the tubers? I would love to know!
Until next time,
Happy foraging!