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American Potatobean (Apios americana)

• Family: Pea (Fabaceae)
• Flowering: June-September.
• Field Marks: This viny member of the pea family has 5 or 7 leaflets and maroon or brown-purple flowers.
• Habitat: Along streams, wet meadows, wet woods, around ponds and lakes, in sloughs.
• Habit: Perennial, herbaceous, twining vine with fleshy tubers.
• Stems: Twining, smooth or with short hairs, up to 10 feet long.
• Leaves: Alternate, pinnately divided into 5 or 7 leaflets, each leaflet lanceolate to ovate, pointed at the tip, rounded or tapering to the base, without teeth, smooth or with short hairs, up to 3 inches long.
• Flowers: Several in short racemes in the axils of the leaves, maroon or brown-purple, up to 2/3 inch long.
• Sepals: 5, united below, green, smooth or hairy.
• Petals: 5, the parts arranged like those in a sweet pea, maroon or brown-purple, up to 2/3 inch long.
• Stamens: 10.
• Pistils: Ovary superior.
• Fruits: Pods linear, up to 5 inches long, up to 1/3 inch broad.
• Notes: This species is also known as groundnut. The tubers are edible by humans.