Earth-nut

Earth-nut, a popular name of the tubers of certain umbelliferous plants, particularly Bunium bulbocastanum and B. flexuosum, which are common in most parts of Europe. Names of the same signification are given to them in a number of European languages. Arnut, Yernut, Ground-nut, and Jurnut, Scotch and English provincial names, are corruptions of earth-nut. Pig-nut and earth-chestnut are also common English names. They are wholesome, nutritious, sweet, starchy, and very slightly acrid on the palate. When boiled or roasted they are delicious; cooked in the latter way under embers they resemble chestnuts, but are more aromatic, and generally preferred to them by the inhabitants of countries where both are indigenous. In Holland, the Alps, and in some parts of England, particularly in Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, where they are plentiful, they are used in soups. They form an article of trade in Sweden, and have sometimes been recommended as worthy of an attention which they have never yet received in Britain. The two species are very similar in general appearance, although B. bulbocastanum has by some botanists been referred to the genus Carum (Caraway), because its carpels have single vittæ between the ribs, whilst B. flexuosum has three. The former is also a plant of stouter habit. Both have umbels of small white flowers, much divided leaves with very narrow segments, and a single roundish tuber at the root of each plant. B. flexuosum is common in woods, pastures, waysides, &c., in most parts of Britain. B. bulbocastanum is found only in some of the chalk districts of England, but is abundant in many parts of Europe. B. ferulaceum likewise affords tubers, which are used as food in Greece.—The somewhat similar tubers of another umbelliferous plant, Oenanthe pimpinelloides, which grows in the pastures of some parts of the south of England, are sometimes also used for food, notwithstanding the very poisonous qualities of some of its congeners (see WATER-DROPWORT).—A Himalayan umbelliferous plant (Charophyllum tuberosum), a species of Chervil (q.v.), yields edible tubers or earth-nuts.—The name earth-nut is sometimes extended to other small tuberous roots of similar quality, although produced by plants widely remote in the botanical system, as Apios tuberosa and Lathyrus tuberosus; as also to the very different Ground-nut or Ground-bean (q.v.), the Arachis.