Common vetch
Vicia sativa
Family · Fabaceae · Irritating
_Vicia_sativa.jpg){kind=link}
The climber with purplish pink flowers that scrambles up cornfields on tendrils, deliberately sown as fodder and then gone feral everywhere.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Montado
Also known asgarden vetch, tare
How to tell it
A compound leaf with many leaflet pairs and a branched tendril at the tip instead of a leaflet. Purplish pink flowers, one or two held against the stem. Straight pods turning black and popping in the sun.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
Fodder and green manure, one of the Peninsula's oldest crops. The raw seed contains toxic compounds and sustained human consumption caused documented problems in famine years: it is not a lentil substitute.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
No approved contributions for this entry yet.
Nothing appears here without a person reading it first. Contributions do not replace the entry or its warnings: until a botanist confirms, what is written above stands.