How Do Peanuts Grow?

How Do Peanuts Grow? Peanuts are the fruit of the peanut plant. The peanut is a kind of pea, not a nut. Like other peas, peanuts bear seeds in containers called pods (shells). There are two peanuts in most peanut pods.

Peanuts do not grow on trees. Peanuts grow underground. When a raw Peanut sprout, it grows into a bushy plant that bears yellow flowers. When the blossoms have fallen, a shoot from the stem grows longer and longer, bends down, and pushes into the ground. Its tip then swells and grows into a peanut pod.

At harvest time, the peanuts are dug out of the ground with machines. Over its lifetime, the peanut plant will produce about 40 peanut pods before dying.

Peanuts are grown in the warm climates of Asia, Africa, Australia, and North and South America. India and China together account for more than half of the world’s production.

The United States has about 3% of the world acreage of peanuts, but grows nearly 10% of the world’s crop because of higher yields per acre.

Content for this question contributed by John Wilson, resident of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, USA