Can I share this plant with you that made me go insane? It's called apios americana and the only common name that makes sense is "groundnut" or maybe "potato bean" but really it doesn't have a common name because of genocide. Because it was a marginal semi-domesticated food even for native American food ways, it wasn't important enough to save. It was barely important enough to name.
Except! Inexplicably, someone brought it to JAPAN! Where they grow it still! So what the fuck! The wikipedia page lists all the reasons it's too hard to farm, then immediately says "oh but they farm it in Japan and it's called America-hodoimo." Why! How does this make sense!
So then a Louisiana professor started trying to breed it and improve the tubers, but he retired and abandoned the project.
Why am I crazy for this plant? Oh yeah, it fixes its own nitrogen and it's allegedly shade tolerant, so I wonder if it could grow under solar panels.
I am boggled by the natural heritage of eastern North america that is totally unknown and ignored.
I've heard of this and seen it, but I've never had any success propagating it. I brought some tubers to my meadow and buried them last fall but I don't see anything sprouting. They might just be hidden from my sight though.
I don't know if I've heard of it being cultivated in Japan!
Yes, it was domesticated, and there were lots of efforts to re-domesticate it a while back. I didn't know what had happened to the project though, it's sad that it was abandoned.
My foraging mentor said that some people can randomly develop a severe sensitivity to it and get really sick when they eat it...but I reckon that's the case with a lot of foods.
Most places I've found Apios americana the population has been rather small and marginal, but there is one spot my best friend and I found when driving around (on a gravel road leading up to somebody's trailer, next to a large wetland/marsh) that was completely overcome with it. It was everywhere, growing in vast mounds over top of other plants. The plant diversity in that marsh fascinated me. One of those little biodiversity hotspots that randomly occur in the landscape.
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