Peanuts (or ground nuts) are the seeds of a plant. The flower stalks bend over, bury themselves in the soil and the pods ripen underground.
Peanuts don’t grow on trees; they come from a plant in the Fabaceae family, just like peas and beans. The hard brown shell peanuts come in is actually a modified peapod. The peanut plant isn’t a tree that produces an annual crop. Instead it’s a small bush, usually planted in late spring. The bushes are generally one to two feet high but some varieties can reach five feet. As the plant grows it develops runners around the base of the stem, and in early summer these runners will bloom with yellow flowers. The flowers are self-fertilizing and don’t last for long; they soon wither and the runners start to droop.
What happens next is the interesting bit. Most fruits grow from a fertilized flower, but they usually do it in plain sight on the branch. Peanuts do it differently. The withered flower at the tip of each runner sends out a long stalk called a peg; the fertilized ovary is at the tip of this. When the peg touches the ground it pushes down into the soil, anchoring itself firmly. Then the tip starts to swell into a pod, containing two to four seeds. This pod is the peanut shell.
Credit : The Tree Center
Picture Credit : Google
