Family: Fabaceae
Vicia hirsuta
Citation:
Gray, Nat. arr. Brit. Pl. 2:614 (1821).
Synonymy: Ervum hirsutum L., Sp. Pl. 738 (1753).
Common name: Hairy vetch, tiny vetch.
Description:
Slender straggly annual, more or less pubescent; branches thin, 20-80 cm long, simple or branched; leaves 3-8 cm long, with 4-10 pairs of leaflets; leaflets linear or ovate-oblong, 5-20 X 1-4 mm, truncate to emarginate, mucronate, with white pilose hairs usually on the lower surface; tendrils slender, mostly branched; stipules to 3 mm long, semisagittate to lanceolate, the lower often few-toothed or somewhat laciniate.
Flowers 3-4 mm long, 3-8 in axillary racemes near the summit of thin peduncles about half as long as the supporting leaf; bract filiform, c. 0.5 mm long, deciduous; calyx campanulate, 1.3-3 mm long, regular, not globose, covered with white spreading hairs, on a c. I mm long pedicel, teeth linear-subulate, subequal, one to one and a half times as long as the tube; petals hardly exceeding the calyx teeth, whitish, glabrous; standard hardly exceeding the wings, ovate, straight, brown-veined; wings narrow-obovate, shortly auriculate; keel shortest, ovate, with a blue tip.
Pod oblong-rhomboid to trapezoid, 6-11 x 2.5-4 mm, contracted between the seeds, appressed-hairy or sometimes subglabrous, grey-brown to brown-black, 1-3-seeded; seed subglobose or slightly compressed, c. 2.5 mm, whitish, greenish or brown, mottled dark, smooth, shiny; hilum linear, about one-third of the perimeter.
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Image source: fig. 347A in J.P. Jessop and H.R. Toelken Ed. 1986. Flora of South Australia (4th edn).
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Published illustration:
Roy-Craig (1954) Drawings Brit. Pl. 7: 58; Chrtková-Zertová (1979) Flora Iranica 140:t. 23, fig. 3.
Distribution:
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S.Aust.: FR, NL, MU, SL, SE. all mainland States. native to drier fields and thickets in Europe, western Asia and North Africa from where it has spread to North and South America, Polynesia and New Zealand.
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Conservation status:
native
Flowering time: Oct. — Jan.
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SA Distribution Map based
on current data relating to
specimens held in the
State Herbarium of South Australia
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Biology:
No text
Author:
Not yet available
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