Groundnut

Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests

Arizona Mountains forests

Atlantic coastal pine barrens

Blue Mountains forests

Central Pacific Northwest coastal forests

Central Tallgrass prairie

Central-Southern Cascades Forests

Chilean Matorral

Colorado Rockies forests

A tall, tuber-forming perennial sunflower native to eastern North America - also called Jerusalem artichoke or sunroot - grown both for its 2-4 inch bright-yellow late-summer sunflowers and its knobby edible underground tubers. Rough-hairy stems rise 6 to 10 feet bearing ovate, serrate leaves on winged petioles. It spreads aggressively by rhizome and self-seeding to form colonies; Missouri Botanical Garden flatly calls it "weedy and invasive" and difficult to remove once planted.

Pollination

Self-fertile

Groundnut carries fragrant, maroon-to-reddish-brown pea-like flowers in compact racemes that the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and NC State Extension note attract butterflies and pollinators. It also spreads readily by underground tubers and is grown for its tubers and seeds regardless of seed set, so a garden colony persists and increases even where pollination is limited. The published species pages do not document a cross-pollination requirement.

Plants don't grow alone

Larval host

Butterfly

Cloudless sulphur (Phoebis sennae)

Larval host

Butterfly

Silver-spotted skipper (Epargyreus clarus)

Both the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and NC State Extension document Apios americana as a larval host for the Silver-spotted Skipper; this species-level row replaces the old generic skipper-only surface for planning and wildlife detail pages.

Larval host

Butterfly

Skipper butterflies (Hesperiidae (family-level entry))

Both the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and NC State Extension document Apios americana as a larval host for the Silver-spotted Skipper, a legume-feeding skipper whose caterpillars develop on this native vine.

Pollen forage

Bee

Leafcutter bees (Megachile spp.)

Seed forage

Bird

Eastern songbirds (multi-species) (multiple species (Passeriformes))

NC State Extension lists groundnut as attracting songbirds and small mammals, which feed on the seeds and roots; the LBJ Wildflower Center likewise records its value to wildlife.

For people

Edible

Both the tubers and the seeds are edible (Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center; Missouri Botanical Garden). The tubers are used much like potatoes - roasted, mashed, fried, or boiled - and NC State Extension notes that cooked mature tubers are similar to a potato but with a nuttier flavor, finer texture, and about three times the protein; the seeds are cooked and used like other legumes. Long gathered as a food by Indigenous peoples, hence the common names Indian potato and potato bean.

Edible parts

tubers, seeds

Culinary use

Tubers roasted, mashed, fried, or boiled like potatoes (nuttier flavor, finer texture, ~3x the protein of a potato per NC State Extension); seeds cooked and used like other legumes.

Similar plants

Browse lateral options with similar roles, light needs, size, or native-range overlap; these are not filtered for a better climate fit.

Helianthus tuberosus

Sunchoke

Perennial

A rounded, multi-stemmed deciduous shrub native across eastern and central North America, grown for its edible nuts and its season-opening catkins. Showy 2-3 inch yellowish-brown male catkins dangle from bare branches in early spring before the ovate, double-toothed leaves emerge; small egg-shaped edible nuts ripen inside leafy husks by mid- to late summer. Easygoing in average soil and tolerant of clay and black walnut, it suckers into thickets that screen and shelter wildlife.

A tough, medium-sized native tree of the eastern and midwestern United States, grown as much for its showy edible orange fruit as for its distinctive thick, dark gray bark broken into rectangular blocks. Small urn-shaped white-to-greenish-yellow flowers open in May and June, and the sweet fruit ripens after frost. Largely dioecious - a female tree needs a male pollinizer nearby to set fruit - and notably drought- and walnut-tolerant once established.

Tree

A small native tree with white spring flowers, edible summer berries, and copper to red fall color.

Amelanchier canadensis

Canadian serviceberry

A suckering, thicket-forming native cherry that reads as a large shrub or small tree across most of North America. Fragrant white flowers open in elongated drooping racemes in spring, followed by dense pendulous clusters of pea-sized cherries that ripen red to dark purple-black in late summer. The astringent fruit is technically edible after processing, and the plant is a workhorse for wildlife - feeding birds and mammals and hosting sphinx-moth larvae.

A fast, suckering native shrub of streambanks and moist thickets across eastern North America, grown for huge flat-topped cymes of tiny lemon-scented white flowers in early summer and the clusters of dark elderberry drupes that follow. Spreads by root suckers into naturalized colonies 5 to 12 feet tall and wide; the flowers feed butterflies and the showy fruit feeds birds. The raw berries are not eaten fresh - they are cooked into jelly, pie, and wine.