A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1068 entries
vetch
Vetch is a scrambling legume of grassland, hedgerow, and rough ground with paired leaflets, a branched tendril at the tip of each leaf for climbing, and pea flowers in purple, blue, yellow, or white followed by flat pods. Like other legumes, it fixes nitrogen in root nodules, so it enriches the ground it grows on and is grown deliberately as a green manure and a fodder crop.
Etymology
The word came into English from Old French, from the Latin, and the same Latin word is the ancestor of the botanical genus name still in use. Its relatives in English include fitch, an older dialect form, which is a separate word from the fitch meaning a polecat pelt that gave the fisher its name.
Notes
Vetches were among the first plants domesticated in the Fertile Crescent and were a staple long before anyone was choosy, and bitter vetch remains have been found in the earliest farming villages. Tufted vetch and common vetch are the ordinary wild ones in Britain, and the vetch on a bank in June is one of the better places to watch bumblebees work a flower that has to be forced open.