Searching for Apios americana, cultivar LA85-034

[Zeedman]

American groundnut. Edible potato-like tubers (but more nutritious), long twining vines with beautiful flowers. This cultivar was developed somewhere around 1990, in a breeding program by the Louisiana Agricultural Experimental Station under W. J. Blackmon and B. D. Reynolds. I seem to remember it being released, and am hoping to find a source of tubers (seed would probably not breed true).

 

[Ridgerunner]

Have you tried contacting the Louisiana Extension service?

 

[heirloomgal]

Well, that's a very interesting garden plant. This is something I'd like to try someday; I have never even heard of it until now. Thread title caught my attention because I was thinking recently of starting a new thread about growing Tigernuts, which I have finally found ample seed for but have no idea how to grow. Wasn't sure if they were related or possibly the same thing. (They are indeed totally different plants.) I'll be curious if you can source some tubers.

Edit: Company in Canada called TerrePromise sells them, $10.00 a shipment

 

[Zeedman]

Have you tried contacting the Louisiana Extension service?

Probably a good idea, since sources that came up appear to use a different numbering system.

I posted this question elsewhere, and was directed to a source that sells several cultivars of groundnut:
Oikos Tree Crops - groundnuts
They provide good descriptions of each cultivar, often including the Northern range. Their prices appear to be fairly reasonable.

Another poster directed me here:
Interwoven Farm - groundnuts

It appears that tubers are sold (and planted) in the Fall like garlic; really odd for a member of the bean family. Apparently they have some very rampant vines, and wide variation in tuber size & placement. I saw a reference to "containment"... which gives me sunchoke flashbacks. The tubers are supposedly more nutritious than potatoes, it remains to be seen if the yield (and ease of harvest) would justify setting an area aside for them. If I grow these, it will be in a location other than my vegetable gardens, in case they prove to be invasive... or if, as suggested, I chose to let the tubers enlarge for a second year. Like another tuber-forming vine (Dioscorea polystachya, Chinese yam, worth discussing in a thread of its own) the vines could be grown just for their ornamental purposes.

I'm really curious whether some of TEG's Southern members have experience with either species, since both apparently grow wild in parts of the Southern U.S..

 

[flowerbug]

i'd never heard of them before so it has been interesting reading up on them.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

(seed would probably not breed true).

Seed may not even EXIST. A lot of the cultivated American Groundnuts are triploid and hence, sterile. In fact until I went to college I thought they ALL didn't make seeds, as I had never seen one pod up (though, given that the vines would appear in random places, either some of them DID or a lot of tubers got moved around in ground fill)