2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Underground peanuts (lat. Arachis hypogaea) - an annual low herb of the genus Peanut (Latin Arachis), representing the glorious family of Legumes on Earth (Latin Fabaceae). Its fruits, which are beans, are called nuts by humans, although they are not nuts according to the botanical standard. But their good taste and hardness are more like some real nuts. The rich chemical composition of the underground peanut fruits and the nutty flavor have made them a popular food product all over the world.
What's in your name
Both words of the plant's name are based on the ancient Greek language.
The Latin word "Arachis", which is a generic name, owes to the protective shell of the bean, the surface of which nature has decorated with an intricate pattern that resembles skillful spider webs. Therefore, the ancient Greek word with the meaning "spider" turned into a Latin word with a similar sounding and became the generic name for a number of morphologically and genetically close plants of the legume family.
The specific epithet "hypogaea" has an exact translation into Russian by the word "underground", since the fruits of this plant, unlike numerous relatives in the Legume family, are formed in underground conditions, and do not hang from the above-ground plant stems, like beans, peas … the plant has earned such a feature among the people a synonym name,"
Peanut ».
The plant also has such a name -
Cultural peanuts … The fact is that this species, which is a natural hybrid of two wild types of Peanuts, improved by breeders, is the only species of the genus that has received recognition from humans and has become an important product of his diet. Most other species of the genus Peanuts, although they supply the soil with nitrogen, are classified as weeds by humans.
Description
This amazing annual plant of the legume family differs little from its relatives with its aboveground and underground frequent. But his manner of hiding its fruits in the soil is, perhaps, a unique phenomenon in the plant world.
The taproot with a branched network of adventitious roots releases erect stems to the surface of the earth, reinforced with lateral branches, together with which they create a plump green bush 25 to 40 centimeters high, less often up to 70 centimeters. The surface of the stems can be bare or protected by pubescence. The section of the stem is four-pentahedral.
Branched shoots are covered with pubescent, paired leaves, arranged in the next order. Leaves of a complex sheet of elliptical shape, with a sharp nose. The elongated sharp-nosed stipules of the cultivated peanut have grown together with the petiole of a complex leaf.
In the axils of the leaves, flowers are born, forming few-flowered inflorescences-brushes. The flowers have a moth-like shape with a corolla of five petals, typical for plants of the legume family, and are painted in a whitish or yellow-red color. They are divided into two types: those that are born at the top of the stem are usually belated and infertile. The same flowers that, after pollination, can reach the soil in order to hide their fruits in it, choose places for themselves on the lower branches, closer to a reliable shelter.
The crown of the growing season is beans with a large reticulate fragile pericarp, inside which one to five seeds can hide, which people call peanuts or peanuts.
Usage
The unique composition of fatty oil, which makes up more than 50% of the contents of the seeds, plus the presence of proteins, starch, globulins, sugars and an even long list of other useful components, have made Peanuts the most popular food product in the world.
It is eaten fresh; added to various delicacies and baked goods; prepare peanut butter by mixing ground peanuts with vegetable oil. Peanut butter and peanut seeds are used in medicine.
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