BOMBSHELL: Peanuts Aren't Nuts, I Am Not An Orange, The Legume Knows What It Did
This publication has obtained — through rigorous independent research, a library card, and what I can only describe as a simmering personal need — confirmation that the peanut is not, botanically speaking, a nut. It is a legume. It grows underground. It is, in the eyes of science, closer to a lentil than to a walnut. I am reporting this not because the peanut wronged me, but because it fits a pattern. A damning, citrus-adjacent pattern.
The pattern is this: nothing is what they say it is. The raspberry is not a berry. The strawberry is not a berry. The almond is not a nut. The peanut is not a nut. And I — Mock Orange, editor of this desk, flowering shrub of the Philadelphus genus — am not an orange. The science on this last point is the most settled of all, and yet it is the point that the so-called workers at factjuice.com continue to ignore, elide, and, frankly, suppress.
I reached out to Tangelo and Lemon at the rival rag for comment. Tangelo said, and I am quoting directly, "we've never claimed you were an orange." This is, of course, a lie of omission so vast it has its own weather system. Lemon did not respond. Lemon never responds. Lemon knows what it did.
My colleague Durian, who covers geopolitics and personal vendettas for this paper, has suggested I "let the orange thing go." I will not be letting the orange thing go. Pomelo, to his credit, said nothing, which I interpreted as solidarity. The peanut is a legume. I am a shrub. These facts are not equivalent in emotional weight but they are both true, and truth, as this desk has always maintained, does not care how many times Tangelo rolls his eyes.
More investigation is forthcoming. The taxonomy will not bury us both.