Herbariuma Backpackers project
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Yellow vetch

Vicia lutea

Family · Fabaceae · Irritating

Toxic
Yellow vetch (Vicia lutea)Yellow vetch (Vicia lutea)
Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0

The only yellow-flowered vetch in the Peninsula, which makes it instantly recognisable in a field full of purple vetches. The pods turn black and hairy as they dry.

Where it grows

Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Dunes and sand · Scrubland

Also known as

smooth yellow vetch

In flower

How to tell it

A climbing or prostrate plant with leaves of five to ten pairs of narrow leaflets and a branched tendril at the tip. Pale yellow or cream flowers, often with purplish veins, solitary or in pairs and nearly stalkless at the axil. Flat pods covered in long hairs, black when ripe.

What it is confused with

No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.

What it is for

Forage, no use for a walker. Like all wild vetches, the seeds contain vicine and convicine and are not eaten: in people with G6PD deficiency they trigger a haemolytic crisis, the same mechanism as favism.

Sources