Prairie turnip — timpsula in Lakota, breadroot or pomme blanche to French-Canadian voyageurs — is the starchy, egg-shaped taproot of Pediomelum esculentum, a low, hairy, palmately leaved legume of the North American Great Plains. Despite its common name it is no relation to the turnip: it is a wild pea-family plant whose thickened root, buried a hand's-depth in dry prairie sod, banks a dense, mildly sweet, chestnut-like starch. A cornerstone of Plains Indigenous foodways, the peeled roots are eaten fresh, boiled or roasted, or — most enduringly — braided by their tough fibres, dried, and pounded into a pale flour that thickens soups and stretches through winter.