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2007-10-16T17:54:56Z

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{{Taxobox
| color = lightgreen
| name = ''Conopodium majus''
| image = Illustration Conopodium majus British Flora.jpg
| image_width = 240px
| regnum = [[Plant]]ae
| divisio = [[Flowering plant|Magnoliophyta]]
| classis = [[Dicotyledon|Magnoliopsida]]
| ordo = [[Apiales]]
| familia = [[Apiaceae]]
| genus = ''[[Conopodium]]''
| species = '''''C. majus'''''
| binomial = ''Conopodium majus''
| binomial_authority = ([[Gouan]]) [[Loret.]]
| synonyms = ''Bunium flexuosum'' [[Jonathan S. Stokes|Stokes]] ''Conopodium denudatum'' [[Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Koch|Koch]]
}}

'''''Conopodium majus''''' is a small [[perennial plant|perennial]] [[herb]], whose underground part resembles a [[chestnut]] and is sometimes eaten as a wild or cultivated [[root vegetable]].

The plant has many English names (many of them shared with ''[[Bunium bulbocastanum]]'', a related plant with similar appearance and uses) variously including '''kippernut''', '''cipernut''', '''arnut''', '''jarnut''', '''hawknut''', '''earth chestnut''', '''groundnut''', and '''earthnut'''. From its popularity with [[pig]]s come the names '''pignut''', '''hognut''', and more indirectly '''Saint Anthony's nut''', for [[Anthony the Great]] or [[Anthony of Padua]], both [[patron saint]]s of [[swineherd]]s. (See [[groundnut]], [[earthnut]], and [[hognut]] for other plants which share these names.)

The plant is common through much of [[Europe]] and parts of [[North Africa]]. It grows in woods and fields, and is an [[indicator plant|indicator]] of long-established [[grassland]].

It has a smooth, slender, curving stem, up to 1 [[metre|m]] high, much-divided [[leaf|leaves]], and small, white [[flower]]s in many-rayed terminal compound [[umbel]]s.

The rounded "nut" (inconsistently described by authorities as a [[tuber]], [[corm]], or [[root]]) is similar to a chestnut in its brown colour and its size (up to 25 [[millimetre|mm]] in diameter), and its sweet, aromatic flavour has been compared to that of the chestnut, [[hazelnut]], [[sweet potato]], and [[Brazil nut]]. Palatable and nutritious, its eating qualities are widely praised, and it is popular among [[wild food]] foragers, but it remains a minor crop, due in part to its low yields and difficulty of harvest.

== Culpepper on pignuts ==

"A description of them were needless, for every child knows them.
Government and virtues: They are something hot and dry in quality, under the dominion of Venus; they provoke lust exceedingly, and stir up those sports she is mistress of; the seed is excellent good to provoke urine; and so also is the root, but it does not perform it so forcibly as the seed doth. The root being dried and beaten into powder, and the powder being made into an electuary, is a singular remedy for spitting and pissing of blood, as the former chesnut was for coughs."

Taken from [[Nicholas Culpeper]]'s Complete Herbal

== Shakespeare on pignuts ==

''"I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow; and I with my long nails will dig thee pignuts"''

-[[Caliban (character)|Caliban]], [[The Tempest]] by [[William Shakespeare]]

== External links ==
* [http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/cgi-bin/arr_html?Conopodium+majus Plants for a Future database]
* [http://www.simonthescribe.co.uk/pignuts.html Photographs of digging for pignuts]

[[category:Root vegetables]]
[[Category:Underutilized crops]]
[[Category:Flora of Europe]]

{{vegetable-stub}}

Conopodium majus - Revision history

MediaWiki default at 17:54, 16 October 2007