Hard clam

The hard clam (Mercenaria mercenaria), also known as the round clam, hard-shell (or hard-shelled) clam, or the quahog, is an edible marine bivalve mollusk that is native to the eastern shores of North America and Central America from Prince Edward Island to the Yucatán Peninsula. It is one of many unrelated edible bivalves that in the United States are frequently referred to simply as clams. Older literature sources may use the systematic name Venus mercenaria; this species is in the family Veneridae, the venus clams. Confusingly, the "ocean quahog" is a different species, Arctica islandica, which, although superficially similar in shape, is in a different family of bivalves: it is rounder than the hard clam, usually has black periostracum, and there is no pallial sinus in the interior of the shell. The hard clam has many alternative common names. It is also known as the Northern quahog, round clam, or chowder clam. In fish markets, there are specialist names for different sizes of this species of clam. The smallest legally harvestable clams are called countnecks or peanuts, next size up are littlenecks, then topnecks. Above that are the cherrystones, and the largest are called quahogs or chowder clams. The most distinctive of these names is quahog (ˈkoʊhɒɡ , ˈkwɔːhɒɡ , or kwəˈhɒɡ , also spelt quahaug, quohog or cohog). The word comes from the Narragansett word "poquauhock", which is similar in Wampanoag and some other Algonquian languages; it is first attested in North American English in 1794. Native polities on the eastern Atlantic seaboard made valuable beads called wampum from the shells, especially those colored purple; the species name mercenaria is related to the Latin word for commerce. Today people living in coastal New England still use Algonquian words for the clam, as they have done for thousands of years. In many areas where aquaculture is important, clam farmers have bred specialized versions of these clams with distinctions needed for them to be distinguished in the marketplace.