Peanut

The peanut, also known as the groundnut or, in parts of the United States, the goober or monkey nut, is a legume crop native to South America grown mainly for its edible seeds, which are borne in pods that mature underground, an atypical trait among legumes called geocarpy that led the botanist Carl Linnaeus to name the species hypogaea, Greek for under the earth. It is widely grown in the tropics and subtropics by both small and large commercial producers, both as a grain legume and as an oil crop, and like most other legumes it harbors symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria in its root nodules, which improve soil fertility and make it valuable in crop rotations. Its edible products include peanut oil and peanut butter, and peanut sauces are widely used in Latin American, African and Southeast Asian cuisines.