CHAPTER I 

 HISTORY OF THE GARDEN PEA 



Of the many legumes used as human food, the garden 

 pea is one of the commonest and most varied, and is as 

 delectable and as nutritious as any. These attributes 

 of a vegetable usually indicate an ancient origin. In 

 the case of the garden pea, its domestication is so ancient 

 that its wild prototype has never been found, either 

 because it no longer exists or because in its evolution 

 the modern pea has become unlike its ancestor of several 

 thousand years ago. Despite its unknown origin, the 

 main facts in the history of the garden pea, as associated 

 with agriculture, ancient and modern, are well known, 

 although its culture until a few hundreds of years ago 

 was confused with that of the field pea with which, no 

 doubt, it has been hybridized since the remotest culture 

 of the two types. 



There afe many unmistakable records of garden 

 peas in the writings of the old Greeks, in the bucolics 

 of the Romans, in the voluminous herbals of a few 

 centuries ago; while modern garden writers have given 

 this vegetable as much attention as any other esculent. 

 It could hardly be expected that at this late date one 

 could add much to the long and oft -repeated story of the 

 pea. In any history of the pea, brief or otherwise, the 

 annals as recorded must be accepted essentially as they 

 are found. About all that seems necessary in the chapter 

 in hand, in view of the many accounts of the evolution of 

 peas in print, is an attempt to set forth such facts as will 

 serve as a background to make accounts of species, 

 groups, varieties, and characters in succeeding chapters 

 more easily understood and more usable. 



No one knows, nor is it probable that any one will 

 ever discover, from what particular source in plant or 

 territory the garden pea originated. Botanists and 

 plant explorers have many times found spontaneous 

 specimens of Pisum in the Old World which they thought 

 might have been the plant from which cultivated peas 

 came, but further study in every case has shown that 

 the supposed parent was the offspring of garden plants 

 relapsed into wildness, rather than vestiges of a parent 

 stock. Just as we do not certainly know the indigenous 

 originals of most of the cereals, of sorghum, sugar-cane, 

 corn, peanut, yam, sweet potato and many other of the 

 plants with which husbandmen are most concerned 

 through immemorial cultivation, so we shall probably 

 never be able to identify the garden pea with its wild 

 original. 



Botanists do not even agree as to whether garden 

 peas are derived from one, two, or several wild species. 

 Nor can it be told where are the habitats of all of the 

 several species conjectured by one or another of the 

 writers on Pisum as probable ancestors. The ancients 

 did not distinguish carefully between peas, beans, 

 lupines, vetches, chick-peas, and lentils, each with their 

 several kinds, and thus created a vast field for conjecture 



in historical and linguistic studies of these several pulses. 

 The modern student who wishes to study the evolution 

 of the pea must begin at an early and plain landmark in 

 its history and travel from there. But first we must 

 assign the garden pea a place in botany and separate it 

 from its near of kin, the field pea. 



Garden peas, it will be found in Chapter II dealing 

 with the botany of esculent peas, seem to fit, according 

 to present knowledge, best into the collective species 

 Pisum sativum which may be divided conveniently 

 into six sub-species. Of these sub-species but two are 

 of importance to cultivators: namely, Pisum sativum 

 hortense, the supposed progenitor of the garden pea; 

 and Pisum sativum arvense, from which field peas 

 are supposed to have been evolved. Until very recently, 

 and even by some botanists now, the garden pea was 

 supposed to constitute the species Pisum sativum; 

 other botanists place garden peas as derivatives of Pisum 

 elatius. 



No one can say whether the pea described by the 

 Greek and Latin writers was the garden pea or the field 

 pea. Probably Ruellius in 1536 was the first naturalist 

 to distinguish between the two and he none too plainly 

 so far as characters are concerned. His simple state- 

 ment is that there are two kinds of peas; one the field 

 pea which is a trailing plant, and the other a climbing 

 plant whose fresh pods and peas are eaten. Brief as 

 this characterization is, botanists and gardeners following 

 Ruellius have kept the two types distinct as either species 

 or sub-species. Probably until the last three centuries, 

 or for a much lesser time, the terms garden and field 

 peas would suffice to distinguish the classes of cultivated 

 peas for most of those who grew the two kinds, and they 

 are still the only names known by some growers. How 

 may the two sub-species be distinguished horticulturally? 



The garden peas, of which there are now several 

 hundred varieties, have white flowers. The seeds are 

 round and smooth, wrinkled or indented; and creamy 

 yellow, or bluish green. The vines are dwarf, half- 

 dwarf, or tall; leaf axils usually green or unpigmented. 

 Garden peas are tender to cold, heat, and drouth. This 

 sub-species may be divided into two well-marked groups 

 for culinary purposes: shelling peas of which the seeds, 

 green or ripe, alone are eaten and the pods of which split 

 open at maturity and are lined on the inside by a thin, 

 hard membrane; and edible podded or sugar peas 

 of which the pods are sweet, tender, not ' ' parchment- 

 lined," and do not become dry and split at maturity. 

 Some botanists put these groups in separate species or 

 at least in two sub-species. 



Field peas, to which are ascribed comparatively 

 few varieties, bear colored flowers with standards usually 

 purple or lavender, the wings of deeper red or even 

 purple, and the heel greenish. The pods are smaller 



