page_title: Astragalus crassicarpus
section_title: Edibility
hierarchical_section_title: Astragalus crassicarpus / Edibility
caption_attribution_description: English: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/10292851
context_page_description: Astragalus crassicarpus, known as ground plum or buffalo plum, is a perennial species of flowering plant in the legume family, Fabaceae, native to North America. It was described in 1813. The fruit is edible and was used by Native Americans as food and horse medicine. It is a host of afranius duskywing larvae. It is also known as groundplum milkvetch and pomme de prairie.
context_section_description: The name crassicarpus (from both Latin and Greek) means "thick fruited" which refers to the plant's fleshy fruits. The Dakota people gave the plant the name "pte ta wote" (buffalo food), while the Omaha and Ponca people gave the plant two names, "tdika shande" and "wamide wenigthe" (something to go with seed). The Omaha and Ponca used the plant to prepare corn seed for planting. The Dakota ate the fruit right off of the plant and the Pawnee ate them to sate their thirst. The fruit dries out once the seeds ripen, making them become tough and inedible by midsummer. It was used as medicine for horses by the Lakota people.
  It is a food source for sheep and cattle. Although the fruit is edible, the rest of the plant is poisonous. The immature fruit can be eaten raw, cooked, or pickled. Its fruit tastes like a sweet pea and they were eaten by the original inhabitants of the prairie, though the raw fruit has been described as "hardly appetizing". The cooked fruits taste like string beans. Similar looking species are completely poisonous. The afranius duskywing butterfly (Erynnis afranius) uses the plant as a host for its larvae.
caption: Ground plums
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