Vicia sativa

"Vicia heterophylla" redirects here, based on the plant described by Carl Presl. The plant thus named by V.N. Voroshilov is Vicia japonica as described by Asa Gray.
Common vetch
Vicia sativa flowers and leaves
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
(unranked): Angiosperms
(unranked): Eudicots
(unranked): Rosids
Order: Fabales
Family: Fabaceae
Subfamily: Faboideae
Tribe: Vicieae
Genus: Vicia
Species: V. sativa
Binomial name
Vicia sativa
L.
Synonyms

Vicia angustifolia L.
Vicia angustifolia Reichard
Vicia cordata Hoppe
Vicia cuneata Gren. & Godr.
Vicia cuneata Guss.
Vicia heterophylla C.Presl
Vicia segetalis Thuill.

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. There is no firm evidence that this is the same as the "tare" in some English translations of the Bible (as in the "Parable of the Tares"); Darnel ryegrass (Lolium temulentum) is another candidate.

There are at least four subspecies generally accepted:

Description

Vicia sativa is a sprawling annual herb, 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.[2]

The fruit is a legume pod up to 6 or 7 centimeters long, which is hairy when new, smooth later, then brown or black when ripe. It contains 4-12 seeds.[3][4]

Cultivation

Sown for fodder,[5] the seed is sown densely, up to 250  kilograms per hectare. However, when grown for seed, less seed should be used; otherwise the crop will be too thick, reducing flower and seed production. When meant for seed, sowing is done early in the planting season for good returns; but, when for green food, any time in spring is suitable. Sometimes, a full crop can be obtained even when sown as late as summer, though sowing so late is not recommended.

After the seed is sown and the land carefully harrowed, a light roller ought to be drawn across, to smooth the surface and permit the scythe to work without interruption. Also, the field should be watched for several days to prevent pigeons – which are remarkably fond of tares – from devouring much of the sown seed.

Horses thrive very well on Common Vetch, even better than on clover and rye grass; the same applies to fattening cattle, which feed faster on vetch than on most grasses or other edible plants. Danger often arises from livestock eating too much vetch, especially when podded; colics and other stomach disorders are apt to be produced by the excessive amounts devoured.

Cereal grains can be sown with vetch so it can use their stronger stems for support, attaching via tendrils.[6] When grown with oats or other grasses, the vetch can grow upright; otherwise its weak stems may sprawl along the ground.[7] Several cultivars are available for agricultural use,[8] and as for some other legume crops, rhizobia can be added to the seed.[7]

Pests that attack this crop include the powdery mildew fungus Erysiphe pisi, the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum, the corn earworm (Heliothis zea), the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), and spider mites of genus Tetranychus.[7]

During the early 20th century, a mutant of the common vetch arose with lens-shaped seeds resembling those of the lentil, leading to vetch invasions of lentil fields. D. G. Rowlands showed in 1959 that this was due to a single recessive mutation. The transition from traditional winnowing to mechanized farming practices largely solved this problem.[9]

History

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.[10]

Notes

  1. ↑ "BSBI List 2007". Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland. Archived from the original (xls) on 2015-02-25. Retrieved 2014-10-17.
  2. ↑ Van Der Kooi, C. J.; Pen, I.; Staal, M.; Stavenga, D. G.; Elzenga, J. T. M. (2015). "Competition for pollinators and intra-communal spectral dissimilarity of flowers" (PDF). Plant Biology. doi:10.1111/plb.12328.
  3. ↑ Blamey, M.; Fitter, R.; Fitter, A (2003). Wild flowers of Britain and Ireland: The Complete Guide to the British and Irish Flora. London: A & C Black. p. 142. ISBN 978-1408179505.
  4. ↑ Stace, C.A. (2010). New flora of the British isles (Third ed.). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. p. 159. ISBN 9780521707725.
  5. ↑ Hackney, P. (Ed). 1992. Stewart and Corry's Flora of the North-east of Ireland. Third edition. Institute of Irish Studies The Queen's University of Belfast.ISBN 0 85389 446 9
  6. ↑ FAO Animal Feed Resources
  7. 1 2 3 FAO Crop Profile
  8. ↑ Lloveras, J., et al. Varieties of vetch (Vicia sativa L.) for forage and grain production in Mediterranean areas.
  9. ↑ Fred Gould. "The Evolutionary Potential of Crop Pests" (PDF). American Scientist.
  10. ↑ Daniel Zohary and Maria Hopf, Domestication of plants in the Old World, third edition (Oxford: University Press, 2000), p. 119.

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