A groundnut is another name for a peanut. Despite its name, a peanut isn't actually a nut at all: it's a legume, like beans or peas, that grows underground in a shell. When the peanut plant flowers, something remarkable happens. After pollination, the flower stem bends down and pushes into the soil, where the peanuts develop beneath the surface. Farmers harvest them by pulling up the entire plant, revealing clusters of groundnuts clinging to the roots.

The name groundnut makes perfect sense when you see how they grow, literally in the ground rather than on trees like many nuts. In many parts of the world, especially in Africa and Asia, people call them groundnuts rather than peanuts. George Washington Carver, an agricultural scientist, helped popularize many uses for peanuts in the early 1900s, from cooking oil to printer's ink, helping Southern farmers grow a valuable crop that also enriched their soil.

Whether you call them peanuts or groundnuts, they're the same protein-packed seeds that become peanut butter, get roasted for snacks, or add crunch to stir-fry dishes.