Journey of peanuts to Indiaīelieved to have been first grown in Peru and Brazil in South America, the oldest documentation of groundnuts is in the form of art, peanut designs on jars, dating as far back as 3,500 years ago. What makes it memorable is an oft asked riddle by kids: Name the plant that flowers above the ground but fruits under the ground? The answer to that would be - Hey nut, it is groundnut!Īnother popular limerick of those innocent years was: This category includes peanuts, goober nut, or monkey nut (UK), which in some cultures and cuisines are simply called groundnuts. But scratch a bit into the botanical definition - peanut is a type of groundnut with botanical name Fabaceae, the legume or pea family. The term groundnut refers to the entire genus of seeds that ripen underground. The first shocker for me as a kid was: peanuts are not nuts, neither is it a pea! They are seeds of certain legume plants. Whoever lost insisted on a second cone with the hope of being the next winner. Cones would come in different sizes, while munching on them we always counted the peanuts to see whose cone had more. Little wooden pushcarts of vendors selling roasted peanuts in paper cones were one of the main reasons why my sister and I loved visiting beaches in our childhood. Origins in South America, flourishes in India
