Tufted vetch
Scientific Name: Vicia cracca L.
Family: Fabaceae
MORPHOLOGY
Growth habit and size: Perennial herbaceous, climbing plant, up to 150 cm tall.
Stem: Scandent, striated, glabrous or with few scattered hairs, and roots containing nodules for nitrogen fixation.
Leaves: Spiral, paripinnate leaves, 5-10 cm long, with a curved axis, composed of 10-24 leaflet segments, ending in a branched tendril derived from the transformation of the apical leaflet segments, with green stipules, without dark nectar glands, 4-9 mm long, and divided into 2 undivided sickle-shaped lobes; leaflets narrowly lanceolate, 3-6 mm wide and 15-25 mm long, ending in a small mucro.
Flowers: Flowers arranged in simple, dense, pedunculated racemes, about as long as the leaves, bearing 10-30 flowers, with peduncle longer than one of the flowers themselves; glabrous or subglabrous flowers, hermaphroditic, zygomorphic, pentamerous, papilionaceous, i.e., with the upper petal folded and larger than the others, known as banner; lateral petals free, lower petals fused to form the keel; corolla of varied colors: blue, light-blue, violet or purple. Blooms from April to August.
Fruits and seeds: The fruit is a pod 4-6 mm wide and 10-25 mm long, darkening at maturity, coated inside with a whitish fuzz, containing 2-6 seeds with hilum occupying 1/5-1/3 of the circumference.
Distribution and habitat
It grows throughout Italy except in Sicily, from sea level up to 1,800 m. It grows in meadows and ruderal environments, along embankments or hedges.
USES
The leaves and seeds are edible and were used as vegetables in Puglia. The plant is cultivated as fodder for livestock.
Photo: Licensed freely by Saxifraga and Roel Meijer, and kindly provided by Claudio Farinati.
