Common Vetch

Vicia sativa

"Vicia sativa", known as the common vetch, garden vetch, tare or simply "the vetch", is a nitrogen fixing leguminous plant in the family Fabaceae. Although considered a weed when found growing in a cultivated grainfield, this hardy plant is often grown as green manure or livestock fodder.
Common Vetch (Vicia sativa) Nonnative. In a "grassy/meadowy" disturbed area at a mixed forest edge. Common vetch,Geotagged,Spring,United States,Vicia sativa

Appearance

"Vicia sativa" is a sprawling annual herb, a member of the pea family Fabaceae, with hollow, four-sided, hairless to sparsely hairy stems which can reach two meters in maximum length. The leaves are stipulate, alternate and compound, each made up of 3 to 8 opposite pairs of linear, lance-shaped, oblong, or wedge-shaped, needle-tipped leaflets up to 3.5 centimeters long. Each compound leaf ends in a branched tendril. The pealike flowers occur in the leaf axils, solitary or in pairs. The flower corolla is 1 to 3 centimeters in length and bright pink-purple in color, more rarely whitish or yellow. The flowers are mostly visited by bumblebees. The fruit is a legume pod up to 6 or 7 centimeters long which is hairy when new and smooth later, brown or black when ripe. It contains 4-12 seeds.
Common Vetch (Vicia sativa) Primary succession plants are beginning to take hold this spring in our areas that are being rehabbed! Common vetch,Vicia sativa

Evolution

Common Vetch has also been part of the human diet, as attested by carbonised remains found at early Neolithic sites in Syria, Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia. It has also been reported from predynastic sites of ancient Egypt, and several Bronze Age sites in Turkmenia and Slovakia. However, definite evidence for later vetch cultivation is available only for Roman times.

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