Showing posts with label Groundnut. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Groundnut. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Groundnut
Dried Groundnut pods have the curious habit of twisting up like corkscrews when the pods split open. How do I know this? While settling in to wrap up last night's sketch I accidentally leaned on the pod. That did it! Seeds went flying. The pod ended up in two twisted up halves. So, what I present below is remembrance and imagination. :-)
Monday, January 11, 2010
A New Development
Today I enrolled in a botanical art drawing course! I am very excited!
Upon asking my instructor, Marcia, what she thought about blogging my course experience, her reply was, "That sounds like fun! What a great idea!" I'll take that as a "yes". ;-)
The course starts in two weeks, but the first week is general orientation with interfaces and a test upload. I just got logged in today; I'll have more to say in the near future.
I started a groundnut pod drawing last evening. It was very lightly sketched in with a 4H so Photoshop did the value enhancement here. I'm thinking that just a few lines with varied weighting can hold a lot of information.
Upon asking my instructor, Marcia, what she thought about blogging my course experience, her reply was, "That sounds like fun! What a great idea!" I'll take that as a "yes". ;-)
The course starts in two weeks, but the first week is general orientation with interfaces and a test upload. I just got logged in today; I'll have more to say in the near future.
I started a groundnut pod drawing last evening. It was very lightly sketched in with a 4H so Photoshop did the value enhancement here. I'm thinking that just a few lines with varied weighting can hold a lot of information.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Groundnut
Groundnut, Apios americana, has completed this year's work above ground. Underground, the perennial tubers are now laden with nutrients and waiting out the cold months before pushing fresh vines next spring.
I've been collecting seed pods to test germination indoors this winter. I'd like to host this vine in my yard next year. Same goes for Bayberry. I have collected many berries although I read that cuttings do nicely. There could be some fun green projects going on here while the snow flies. :-)
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Groundnut
Based on leaf pattern, I figured it was just another kind of Wisteria. When the blossoms came about, I was totally confused--again! :-) Here is the Groundnut, Apios americana, aka A. tuberosa. It's not only native to the area, but was held in great value by the Native Americans and European settlers.
From Walden:
"Digging one day for fish-worms I discovered the ground-nut (Apios tuberosa) 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 told, and had 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 sweetish 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 south - west, 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."
From Useful Wild Plants:
"Narratives of white travelers in our American wilderness bear abundant evidence to the Groundnut's part in saving them from serious hunger. Being a vegetable, it made a grateful complement to the enforced meat diet of pioneers and explorers; and Major Long, whose share in making known the Rocky Mountain region to the world is commemorated in the name of one of our country's loftiest peaks, tells in his journal of his soldiers' finding the little tubers in quantities of a peck or more hoarded up in the brumal retreats of the field mice against the lean days of winter. They may be cooked either by boiling or by roasting."
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Boston, New York, 1897. 370-1. Web. Google Book Search. 24 Jul 2009.
Saunders, Charles Francis. Useful Wild Plants. New York, 1920. 3-4. Web. Google Book Search. 24 Jul 2009.
From Walden:
"Digging one day for fish-worms I discovered the ground-nut (Apios tuberosa) 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 told, and had 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 sweetish 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 south - west, 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."
From Useful Wild Plants:
"Narratives of white travelers in our American wilderness bear abundant evidence to the Groundnut's part in saving them from serious hunger. Being a vegetable, it made a grateful complement to the enforced meat diet of pioneers and explorers; and Major Long, whose share in making known the Rocky Mountain region to the world is commemorated in the name of one of our country's loftiest peaks, tells in his journal of his soldiers' finding the little tubers in quantities of a peck or more hoarded up in the brumal retreats of the field mice against the lean days of winter. They may be cooked either by boiling or by roasting."
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Boston, New York, 1897. 370-1. Web. Google Book Search. 24 Jul 2009.
Saunders, Charles Francis. Useful Wild Plants. New York, 1920. 3-4. Web. Google Book Search. 24 Jul 2009.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)