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Tufted Vetch

Tufted Vetch

Vicia cracca

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How common: Very common

Tufted Vetch is a slender climbing wildflower in the pea family, widespread in Europe and much of Asia. It weaves through grass and bushes using curling tendrils and shows long, dense sprays of purple‑blue flowers in summer. The plant is poisonous, especially the seeds.

Did you know?

  • Its tendrils curl tightly around anything they touch, helping it climb.
  • Caterpillars of several blue butterflies feed on it.

About the species

Identification

Slender, scrambling perennial, usually 20–100 cm, with soft-hairy green stems. Each leaf is made of 6–12 pairs of narrow leaf pieces and ends in a curling tendril that grips nearby plants. Flowers are many small pea-flowers packed in a long drooping cluster, mostly purple to blue-violet. After flowering it forms thin brown pods with several round black seeds. Look-alikes: Common vetch has fewer, larger pinkish flowers, not such long dense clusters. Meadow vetchling has bright yellow flowers and leaves with only one pair of leaf pieces. Poisonous, especially the seeds. Flowers in Finland in June–August.

Plant group

Herbaceous plants

Habitat

meadow

Toxicity

A poisonous plant – do not taste it. Source: HUS Poison Information Centre (Finland), tel. 0800 147 111.

Flowering

Jun–Aug

About the habitat

Open, grassy places such as meadows, roadsides, field margins, shores, waste ground and forest edges; sunny to half‑shaded, from fairly dry to moist soils. Common across the country; rare in northern Lapland.

Sources

Photo: Andreas Eichler, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2015.07.04.-07-Eilenburg Ost--Vogel-Wicke.jpg

Text: Pinkka: Verso- ja leviäintunnistus - Kaikki leviäimet, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.38972

Text: Pinkka: Verso- ja leviäintunnistus - Kaikki versot, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.38972

Text: Pinkka: Yläkoulun Pinkka - Kulttuuriympäristöt, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.38972

Text: Pinkka: BIO-503 Suomen kasvisto ja kasvillisuus - Itämeri: kivikkorannat, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.38972

Text: Wikipedia (Finnish), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiirenvirna

See also