Vetch.Vicia Cracca.Tare.
Found along the borders of thickets, and in fields among grasses and grains, in June and July.
The climbing, leafy stalk grows from 1 to 2 feet high; it is tough-fibred, and much grooved with fine lines. Color, green.
The compound leaf is composed of 20 or more side leaflets, and terminates in a tendril; the leaflets are small and narrow, and are tipped with little needle-like bristles; the surface is finely downy. The leaves, on very short stems, are alternate and clasping by a pair of half-arrow-shaped wings. The color is grayish-green.
The flower is small, and shaped like the bean blossom; its color is a fresh, light, bluish-violet tint, the broad upper petal being faintly lined with darker violet; the calyx is unequally 5-parted, and colored like the corolla. The flowers are densely crowded in long, one-sided curving spikes that grow from the angles of the leaves.
The leafage of this plant affords a good example of the refined green generally found accompanying flowers of a blue or violet hue; its stalk is perhaps a little awkward in gesture, but not so the flexible curving flower-clusters. It grows in communities, and seen from a little distance forms a beautiful mass of blue.