154 FLOWERS OF THE ROADSIDES AND HEDGES 
again by insects which gradually remove the pollen, and the stigma 
becomes sticky receiving pollen from other flowers. In spite of the 
close fitting of the parts, the honey in the flowers is easily reached by 
bees, as the flowers are small. 
The visitors are Apide, Vespide, Diptera (Empidz), Lepidoptera, 
Small White (Pzerzs rape). 
The woody fibres of the pods are directed at half a right angle to 
the axis of the pod, and when ripe the valves curl up corkscrew-wise, 
when dry, shooting the seeds out in all directions. 
Tufted Vetch is addicted to a more or less sandy humus soil, or 
sandy loam, growing on a great variety of rock soils from the early 
Cambrian to Pleistocene or Glacial beds. 
The “rust”, Uvomyces fabe, attacks this plant, also U. pzs¢ and 
Ascochyta bist, and it is galled by a beetle, Apzon gyllenhalli, and 
visited by Apion cracce and Crepidodera rufipes, the moth New Black 
Neck (Zovocampa cracce), and the Heteropterous insect Strvongylocores 
leucocephalus. 
Vicia, Varro, is from a Latin root meaning to bind, from the 
tendrils. Vetch is the same as Fitch. Cyvacca, Dodonzus, is said to 
be from a Greek root meaning croak. 
Tufted Vetch is called Blue Tar-fitch, Cat-peas, Cow Vetch, Wild 
Fetches, Huggaback Pea, Tar Grass, Wild Tare, Thetch Grass, Tine, 
Tine Grass, Tare, Tine Weed. 
There is a proverb: 
“ A thetch will go through 
The bottom of an old shoe.” 
EssENTIAL SPECIFIC CHARACTERS :— 
89. Vicia Cracca, L.—Stem climbing, tall, with branched tendrils, 
leaflets in 10 pairs, narrow, acute, downy, stipules semi-sagittate, 
entire; flower-stalks long, lateral, flowers numerous, purple, 10-30 in 
raceme, 
Meadow Vetchling (Lathyrus pratensis, L.) 
The recent distribution, which is all we have knowledge of so far 
of Meadow Vetchling, shows that it is confined to the Northern 
Temperate and Arctic Zones in Arctic Europe, N. and W. Asia as far 
as the Himalayas, and it has been introduced into North America. In 
Great Britain it is common everywhere as far north as Shetland, and 
ascends in the Highlands to a height of over 1500 ft. It is a native of 
Ireland and the Channel Islands. 
