Product Review

Apios Americana, also known as Indian Potato, Groundnut, or Hopniss, is a perennial native food plant whose natural range is from eastern Canada down to Florida, and west as far as Colorado. It was a traditional staple of native peoples, producing abundant, tasty, nutrient-dense tubers. These contain 17% protein, more than 3 times the amount found in potatoes. A very hardy plant, it produces an attractive vine, with reddish-purple flowers. The tubers grow attached to each other by strings of root (see photos) which makes it easy to locate and pull them up at harvest. We have grown these for years now, and they are productive even in our fairly poor, heavy clay soil. Apart from drought, which slowed them down some for a couple of years, nothing seems to bother them, neither pests nor weather. We have eaten them mostly in stews in the wintertime, when they have replaced potatoes for us. Flavorful and sustaining, we value them highly. Very easy to grow.