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Wood Vetch

Wood Vetch

Ervilia sylvatica

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How common: Common

Wood Vetch is a long, climbing wildflower that threads through other plants in woods and along their edges. It carries loose clusters of white flowers lined with bluish veins and later smooth black pods. Warning: poisonous.

Did you know?

  • The leaves end in a curling tendril that hooks onto nearby plants for support.
  • Among vetches, its flowers are unusually white with fine blue veins.

About the species

Identification

Slender climber 60–180 cm, usually leaning on other plants. Stems soft and hairless. Each leaf is divided into 6–12 pairs of small oval parts and ends in a curling tendril. Flower clusters hang from long stalks and are rather loose, with 6–18 pea-like flowers about 1–2 cm long; they are white with fine blue veins. After flowering, smooth black pods 2.5–3 cm long with a few seeds appear. Unlike the common blue-flowered vetches, Wood Vetch has mostly white flowers and looser clusters. Flowers in Finland mainly in July–August.

Plant group

Herbaceous plants

Habitat

herb-rich forest

Toxicity

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

Flowering

Jul–Aug

About the habitat

Grows in fresh, fairly fertile woods, woodland edges and rich groves, and also on rocky ground and along roadsides. Common in the south, becoming rarer northwards; absent from northern Lapland.

Sources

Photo: Patrick Hacker, CC BY 4.0 https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/6252144269

Text: Pinkka: Kasvitieteen retkeily Ahvenanmaalle - Nåtö ja Harskatan, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.38974

Text: Pinkka: IPS-153 Flora of Subarctic Europe - Comarum-Frangula, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.38974

Text: Pinkka: A Pohjolan kasveja - Dactylis-Epilobium, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.38974

Text: Pinkka (Luomus), CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.38974

Text: Wikipedia (Finnish), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mets%C3%A4virvil%C3%A4

See also