246 LEGUMINOSAE (PULSE FAMILY) 
Cattle will eat this plant when it is young if there is no better 
forage, but it soon becomes hard and innutritious. Stems one to 
three feet tall, much branched, slender and spreading, sparsely 
hairy. Leaves few and rather small, pinnately three-foliolate, the 
leaflets a half-inch to two inches long, thin, oblong or elliptic, 
bristle-tipped, finely appressed-hairy on the under side; petioles 
often scarcely longer than the footstalk of the middle leaflet. 
Flowers in small axillary clusters on very slender peduncles much 
longer than the leaves; corolla violet-purple, about a quarter-inch 
long, the keel often longer than the standard. Pod ovate, pointed, 
flattened, net-veined, about a sixth of an inch long, containing one 
seed. (Fig. 175.) 
Means of control 
Cut before the earliest flowers mature seeds. 
Cultivate and liberally fertilize the ground, reseeding it with 
clovers of a better quality which will smother the growth of this 
weed from dormant seeds. 
COMMON VETCH 
Vicia sativa, L. 
Other English names: Spring Vetch, Pebble Vetch, Tare. 
Introduced. Annual or winter annual. Propagates by seeds, 
Time of bloom: June to August. 
Seed-time: July to September. 
Range: Eastern Canada and New England to the Dakotas, and 
southward to the Gulf of Mexico. Also on the Pacific Coast. 
Habitat: Grain fields, meadows, roadsides, waste places. 
This is the Vetch most commonly grown as a forage plant, and as 
a weed it is often a survival of former cultivation by means of self- 
sown, dormant seeds. Also the seeds are sometimes sown as an 
impurity with grass and grain seeds, and in such places it makes 
itself a nuisance by entangling and pulling down =e crop, making 
the harvest difficult. (Fig. 176.) 
Stems one to three feet long, simple or wai from the 
base, hairy when young but later becoming smooth. Leaves 
pinnately compound, with broad, sharply toothed stipules 
