The Peanut Plant, known in Thai as ton thua lisong, bears its edible seeds under the earth, which is reflected in its botanical name Arachis hypogaea, as hypogaea means ‘under the earth’. The peanut is hence also known as groundnut, a name that in Thai translates as thua din and which is used as a synonym. Its bright yellow flowers are very similar to those of the Wild Peanut Flower (fig.), a related plant that bears a different kind of peanut with a much smoother husk.

The cultivated plant that produces the peanuts we eat today is an allotetraploid thought to have derived from hybridization between the diploids Arachis duranensis, i.e. the Wild Peanut which has the A genome, and Arachis ipaensis, another species that has the B genome.