Fact of the Day: Peanuts

A random bar debate last night left me with a question I had never considered: how do peanuts grow? We were divided by who thought what: on a bush or tree, or in the ground. I took to the bush team, it just seemed right. But I really had no idea, so now I've just looked up some information on peanuts...

Peanuts:

name for a low, annual leguminous plant ( Arachis hypogaea ) of the family Leguminosae ( pulse family) and for its edible seeds. Native to South America and cultivated there for millenia, it is said to have been introduced to Africa by early explorers, and Africans transported as slaves brought the plant with them to North America. In the United States it has been extensively cultivated only since the late 19th cent. It is now grown in most tropical, subtropical, and temperate regions, especially in India and China (the major world producers), W Africa, and the SE United States. The seeds—peanuts—are eaten fresh or roasted and are used in cookery and confectionery. They are ground for peanut butter, an important article of commerce, and yield an oil used for margarine, cooking oil, soap manufacture, and industrial purposes. The herbage is used for hay, the residue from oil extraction (called peanut-oil cakes) for stock feed, and the whole plant, left in the ground, as pasturage for swine. Peanut crops are usually harvested by hand except in the United States. Europe is the chief importer and processor, especially for oil manufacture. In the United States the amount of the crop converted to oil depends on the demand for whole peanuts; it is usually only 15% to 20%. Because of its numerous uses (George Washington Carver developed several hundred), high protein content, and adaptability to varying demand, the peanut is an advantageous agricultural crop. There are two types of peanut plant—bunch nuts and vine, or trailing, nuts—named for the way the plants grow. The peanut plant is unusual for its habit of geocarpy: when the pod starts to form, it is pushed into the ground by the elongation of its stalk and matures underground. Other names for the peanut are goober, pinder, earthnut, groundnut, and ground pea. Peanuts are classified in the division Magnoliophyta , class Magnoliopsida, order Rosales, family Leguminosae.

And just for good measure, I checked another site too...

The peanut plant is procumbent or semi-erect, with rather small compound-pinnate, smooth leaves. The seeds are enclosed in a rather fibrous pod. After the flowers are pollinated a short, thick stem at the flower base, termed gynophore, grows downward and penetrates into the soil, so the fruiting body develops entirely underground. Seeds, the edible part, are 1 to 4 per pod, 0.25 - to 0.75 -inch long and vary from near globose to elongated. In harvesting, the entire plant with adhering seed pods is lifted from the soil, mainly mechanically, dried in windrows or stacks, then threshed to remove the seeds.

So there we have it: peanuts grow on bushes, but also underground! Who would have thought!?

So random.