CXLV.— THE TUFTED VETCH. 
^ Vicia Cracca Linne. 
T he genus Vicia resembles the great Family Leguminos^e, to which it belongs, 
alike in the varied interest of its structure and in its economic value to 
man ; but this particular British species Vicia Cracca Linn6 appeals to us more 
especially by its fascinating beauty and grace. 
While the Family is not only world-wide in its distribution but comprises 
plants of all sizes, from large trees to tiny herbs, the Vetch Tribe are all herbaceous 
and belong mainly to the North Temperate Zone. 
The genus, some species of which have been cultivated from the earliest times, 
either as fodder for cattle, or as yielding seeds used as food by man, bears an ancient 
Classical Latin name, which has been connected with ’vincio, I bind or twine, and also 
with a Celtic word gwig. The etymology of the specific name is more doubtful. 
The name of a genus, as the initial capital indicates, Cracca seems to have been 
coined by Dodoens in the sixteenth century, possibly from the Greek apa^o<i, 
arachos. Many of the popular names of this conspicuous hedgerow plant, such as 
tine-grass^ refer to its clambering mode of growth, while others, such as fitch^ are 
merely provincial pronunciations of vetch. 
Like the majority of the Leguminoste^ the Vetches bear on their roots those 
remarkable tubercles which have been shown of late years to play so important a 
part in the economy of Nature. It appears that the root-hairs become infected by a 
bacillus which is seemingly nourished by some of the substance of the root, possibly 
effete matter. Some of the bacilli become hypertrophied and distorted within the 
tissue of the Vetch, when they are termed “ bacteroids,” and seem to be at least 
in part consumed by the host-plant. The great value of these bacterial organisms 
is, as we have seen, that they possess the power, denied to flowering plants, of 
assimilating the free nitrogen of the atmosphere. On the other hand, it is found 
that the nitrates so valuable in the soil as manure to most plants are actually 
injurious to these bacilli and their tubercle-forming; but that members of the 
Family Leguminoste ^ with the help of their bacterial companions, add to the nitrates 
in the soil. 
The Tufted Vetch belongs to a perennial section of the genus, having a 
creeping rhizome, from which it sends up its slender angular stems, often upwards 
of six feet in length and able by means of the tendrils to clamber to the top of high 
hedges or thickets. 
The graceful leaves, each three or four inches long, consist of some twenty 
pinnately-arranged leaflets, seldom in opposite pairs, each narrow and pointed. At 
the base are two slender stipules, each shaped like the half of an arrow-head : at the 
apex the terminal and several lateral leaflets are replaced by delicate tendrils ; and 
both stems and leaves are either downy or silky with silvery hairs. 
