Four-seeded Peas

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Four-seeded peas (lat. Vicia tetrasperma) - one of the annual representatives of the genus Peas or Vika (Latin Vicia), included by botanists in the legume family (Latin Fabaceae). This fragile creature of nature with a weak curly stem is outwardly similar to its other relatives, except that it does not form dense inflorescences, but prefers to show single or paired, pale blue miniature flowers. Pair-pinned compound leaves give lightness and delicacy to the plant. Legume pods typically contain four seeds, although exceptions occur when there may be three or five seeds per pod. In the wild, it grows like a weed.

Description

The weakness of the stem of an annual plant does not prevent it from being branched and growing up to 60 centimeters long; in especially favorable conditions it can grow twice as long. Climbing or climbing shoots in the absence of support become lodging, performing the role of a ground cover plant. Sometimes the stem is covered with scattered pubescence, but more often it is naked, for which the people call the plant "Vika smooth" or "Smooth peas". Stem thickness from 2 to 3 millimeters.

The complex leaves end in a simple or branched tendril that helps the thin stem to survive among other plants, clinging to them with this tendril. Miniature whole sagittal stipules, often glabrous, but can also be sparsely pubescent. The leaf is formed by paired leaves located on both sides of the common petiole. The length of miniature oblong or linear leaflets varies from 5 to 20 millimeters. The base of the leaves is wedge-shaped, and the rounded blunt end of the leaf is armed with a short sharp spine. The leaf blade, bare from above, is covered with scattered pubescence on the reverse side.

From the axils of the leaves, peduncles appear, bearing single or paired small flowers on pubescent pedicels one millimeter long. Miniature size and calyx (up to 3 millimeters long), dissected by one third of its length, with teeth unequal in length, covered with scattered hairs. The lavender corolla of the flower has outgrown the calyx, reaching a length of 4 to 8 millimeters. Typical flower shapes include a rhombic lavender boat, elliptical bare wings that are outgrown in boat size, and a lavender flag, which may be brighter, colored light blue, with blue veins, or white.

Dark brown at full maturity, four seeds (less often three or five) are located inside an oblong pod-pod up to 16 millimeters long with a pod width of up to 5 millimeters. The early light green color of the pod valves turns to light brown as it ripens.

Usage

Four-seeded peas are a regular in European fields, bypassing only the extreme northern territories. Due to its winter hardiness, the plant is widespread in Western Siberia, and also reached North America. It is also found in East Asia, North Africa and the Caucasus.

In the culture, four-seeded peas are not grown, but grows by themselves in the wild, reckoned by people to the category of weeds.

This does not prevent the plant from being a honey plant if it has managed to grow next to the apiary. Bees do not fly around the plant, collecting nectar from its flowers.

Pets sent to free grazing willingly eat the delicate creature of nature, storing their body with proteins and vitamins that differ in all plants of the legume family, including plants of the genus Vika or Peas.

Surely Pea four-seeded shares with neighbors in the occupied territory with excess nitrogen, which is produced by soil bacteria that have found shelter on the roots of the plant.