PEANUT PLANT
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peanut, (Arachis hypogaea), additionally known as groundnut, earthnut, or goober, legume of the pea household (Fabaceae), grown for its safe to eat seeds. Native to tropical South America, the peanut was once at an early time added to the Old World tropics. The seeds are a nutritionally dense food, prosperous in protein and fat. Despite its a number of frequent names, the peanut is no longer a genuine nut. As with different legumes, the plant provides nitrogen to the soil through capacity of nitrogen-fixing micro organism and is consequently specially treasured as a soil-enriching crop.
The peanut is an annual and can both be an erect shrubby plant, 45–60 cm (18–24 inches) excessive with brief branches, or have a spreading form, 30–45 cm (12–18 inches) excessive with lengthy branches that lie shut to the soil. The stems are sturdy and furry and undergo pinnately compound leaves with two pairs of leaflets. The vegetation are borne in the axils of the leaves and characteristic golden-yellow petals about 10 mm (0.4 inch) across. The rectangular pods have rounded ends and are most usually 25–50 mm (1–2 inches) lengthy with two or three seeds; the pods are reduced in size between the seeds and have a thin, netted, spongy shell. The seeds range from rectangular to almost spherical and have a papery seed coat that degrees in shade from whitish to darkish purple.
Peanut legumes have the extraordinary addiction of ripening underground, a phenomenon regarded as geocarpy. After pollination and the withering of the flower, an uncommon stalklike shape known as a peg grows from the base of the flower towards the soil. The fertilized ovules are carried downward in the sturdy tip of the peg till the tip is properly under the soil surface, at which factor the peg tip begins to enhance into the attribute pod. The pegs every now and then attain down 10 cm (4 inches) or extra earlier than their pointers can boost fruits. These uncommon fruits show up to feature as roots to some degree, absorbing mineral vitamins without delay from the soil. The pods may additionally now not advance correct except the soil round them is nicely furnished with on hand calcium, regardless of the vitamins reachable to the roots.
Peanuts are offered boiled or roasted and are normally used to produce an suitable for eating oil with a excessive smoke point. In the United States the seeds are additionally floor into peanut butter and broadly used in sweet and bakery products. The peanut is used notably as feed for farm animals in some places; the tops of the plants, after the pods are removed, commonly are fed as hay, even though the complete plant may additionally be so used. The improvement of some 300 spinoff merchandise from peanuts—including flour, soaps, and plastics—stems mostly from lookup carried out in the early twentieth century by way of George Washington Carver.
