GROUND-NUT (Apios tuberosa or Glycine Apios), a North American plant of the pea family (Leguminosae), called also Indian potato, native to moist low grounds from New Brunswick to Minnesota and southward to Florida and Texas. It is a twining perennial, climbing to a height of several feet, with leaves corn posed of five to seven ovate leaflets, and bearing in late summer showy clusters of rather large, fragrant, chocolate-brown flowers. From the root are produced strings of starchy edible tubers, i to 2 in. long, with a somewhat nutty flavour. These tubers were used for food by the Delawares, Iroquois and other American Indians, and it is recorded that the Pilgrims, during their first winter in Massachusetts, "were enforced to live on ground-nuts." Concern ing its possibilities of utilization Asa Gray observed that, except for the prior cultivation of the potato, the ground-nut might have been developed into a food plant of high economic value. In Great Britain the name ground-nut is given to the fruit of Arachis hypogaea, commonly known as peanut (q.v.) in the United States.