Digging one day for fish worms I discovered the ground nut (apios tuberosa) on its string, the potato of the aborigines, a sort of fabulous fruit, which I had begun to doubt if I had ever dug and eaten in childhood, as I had told, and had not dreamed it. I had often since seen its crimpled red velvety blossom supported by the stems of other plants without knowing it to be the same. Cultivation has well nigh exterminated it...In these days of fatted cattle and waving grain fields, this humble root, which was once the totem of an Indian tribe, is quite forgotten, or known only by its flowering vine, but let wild Nature reign here once more, and the tender and luxurious English grains will probably disappear before a myriad of foes, and without the care of man the crow may carry back even the last seed of corn to the great corn-field of the Indian's god in the southwest, whence he is said to have brought it; but the now almost exterminated ground nut will perhaps revive and flourish in spite of frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient importance and dignity as the diet of the hunter tribe.
Walden
Henry David Thoreau
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