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Lathyrus aphaca
Also called Yellow vetchling, Yellow-flowered pea, Yellow Vetch, Yellow Peavine, Fingers And Thumbs
Lathyrus aphaca is a scrambling annual pea with yellow flowers, native to the Mediterranean and Middle East, and mainly known as a weed of cultivated fields and roadsides rather than a garden plant. It is grown only occasionally as an ornamental, and its key trait is that it is a self-seeding annual that spreads readily in disturbed soil.
Lathyrus aphaca, known as the yellow pea or yellow vetchling, is an annual species in the family Fabaceae with yellow flowers and solitary, pea-like fruits. It originated in the Middle East and has spread throughout Europe and beyond as a weed of cultivated fields and roadsides. The fruits are eaten as a supplement to diets in some parts of South Asia but are narcotic and potentially toxic in large quantities.
It is believed to have evolved in the Middle East, around Syria and Jordan, along with other leguminous species which have a centre of diversity in that region. Edible species of pea were first cultivated in the Fertile Crescent, while weeds such as L. aphaca are believed to have adapted naturally to an arable or similar human-disturbed habitat between about 23,000 and 11,000 years ago. Lathyrus aphaca itself has some advantages as a farmland weed, being able to fix nitrogen and thus help to fertilise the soil, as well as being edible in small quantities if present in the grain harvest, although it is narcotic when consumed in larger amounts.
Angled pea · Golden Pea · Red pea · Lathyrus fulvus · Everlasting-Pea · Caley pea · Beach pea · Perennial pea · Sweet pea · Round-leaved vetchling · White pea · Grass pea
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Lathyrus aphaca by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
