Vicia hirsuta
Encyclopedia
Vicia hirsuta is a species of flowering plant
from the large genus Vicia
. It is native to Europe and Western Asia. It can be found on other continents as an introduced species
. It is an annual herb producing a slender, often four-sided, hairless to lightly hairy, climbing stem up to 70 to 90 centimeters tall, and known to well exceed one meter at times. The leaves are tipped with tendril
s that support the plant as it climbs. The leaves are made up of several pairs of elongated leaflets each up to 2 centimeters in length with notched, flat, sharply pointed, or toothed tips. The inflorescence
is a raceme
of up to 8 flowers borne near the tip and often on one side only. Each flower is whitish or pale blue, just a few millimeters in length, and short-lived. The fruit is a legume pod up to a centimeter long by half a centimeter wide and hairy, often densely so. It is pale green to nearly black in color and contains usually two seeds.
Flowering plant
The flowering plants , also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants. Angiosperms are seed-producing plants like the gymnosperms and can be distinguished from the gymnosperms by a series of synapomorphies...
from the large genus Vicia
Vicia
Vicia is a genus of about 140 species of flowering plants commonly known as vetches. It is in the legume family . Member species are native to Europe, North America, South America, Asia and Africa. Some other genera of their subfamily Faboideae also have names containing "vetch", for example the...
. It is native to Europe and Western Asia. It can be found on other continents as an introduced species
Introduced species
An introduced species — or neozoon, alien, exotic, non-indigenous, or non-native species, or simply an introduction, is a species living outside its indigenous or native distributional range, and has arrived in an ecosystem or plant community by human activity, either deliberate or accidental...
. It is an annual herb producing a slender, often four-sided, hairless to lightly hairy, climbing stem up to 70 to 90 centimeters tall, and known to well exceed one meter at times. The leaves are tipped with tendril
Tendril
In botany, a tendril is a specialized stem, leaf or petiole with a threadlike shape that is used by climbing plants for support, attachment and cellular invasion by parasitic plants, generally by twining around suitable hosts. They do not have a lamina or blade, but they can photosynthesize...
s that support the plant as it climbs. The leaves are made up of several pairs of elongated leaflets each up to 2 centimeters in length with notched, flat, sharply pointed, or toothed tips. The inflorescence
Inflorescence
An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Strictly, it is the part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed and which is accordingly modified...
is a raceme
Raceme
A raceme is a type of inflorescence that is unbranched and indeterminate and bears pedicellate flowers — flowers having short floral stalks called pedicels — along the axis. In botany, axis means a shoot, in this case one bearing the flowers. In a raceme, the oldest flowers are borne...
of up to 8 flowers borne near the tip and often on one side only. Each flower is whitish or pale blue, just a few millimeters in length, and short-lived. The fruit is a legume pod up to a centimeter long by half a centimeter wide and hairy, often densely so. It is pale green to nearly black in color and contains usually two seeds.