garden pea

A pea is a most commonly green, occasionally golden yellow, or infrequently purple pod-shaped vegetable, the pod has a length of about 4 to 10 centimetres (2 to 4 in), the fruit is widely grown as a cool-season crop. The seeds may be planted as soon as the soil temperature reaches 10 °C (50 °F), with the plants growing best at temperatures of 13 to 18 °C (55 to 64 °F). They do not thrive in the summer heat of warmer temperate and lowland tropical climates, but do grow well in cooler, high-elevation, tropical areas. Many cultivars reach maturity about 60 days after planting. Peas have both low-growing and vining cultivars. The vining cultivars grow thin tendrils from leaves that coil around any available support and can climb to be 1 to 2 metres (3 to 7 ft) high. A traditional approach to supporting climbing peas is to thrust branches pruned from trees or other woody plants upright into the soil, providing a lattice for the peas to climb. Branches used in this fashion are called pea sticks or sometimes pea brush. Metal fences, twine, or netting supported by a frame are used for the same purpose. In dense plantings, peas give each other some measure of mutual support. Pea plants can self-pollinate.

Genome. The pea karyotype consists of seven chromosomes, five of which are acrocentric and two submetacentric. …

The wild pea is restricted to the Mediterranean Basin and the Near East. The earliest archaeological finds of peas date from about 10'000 B.C. Near East and Central Asia. In Egypt, early finds date from c. 4800–4400 BC in the Nile Delta area, and from c. 3800–3600 BC in Upper Egypt. In northern Europe, specifically Fennoscandia, findings of pea data back to 4000 BC. The pea was also present in Georgia in the 5th millennium BC. Farther east, the finds are younger. Peas were present in Afghanistan c. 2000 BC, in Harappan civilization around modern-day Pakistan and western- and northwestern India in 2250–1750 BC. In the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, this legume crop appears in the Ganges Basin and southern India.

Some peas lack the tough membrane inside the pod wall and have tender edible pods, allowing them to be eaten whole. There are two main types:

Snow peas have flat pods with thin pod walls. Pods and seeds are eaten when they are very young. Snap peas (also known as sugar snap peas) have rounded pods with thick pod walls. Pods and seeds are eaten before maturity. The name sugar pea can include both types or be synonymous with either snow peas or snap peas in different dictionaries. The term mangetout (; from French: pois mange-tout, 'eat-all pea') is generally used in British English to refer to the snow pea specifically, but may also refer to a snap pea, especially when used in other contexts. Snow peas and snap peas both belong to macrocarpon group, a cultivar group based on the variety Pisum sativum var. macrocarpum Ser. named in 1825. It was described as having very compressed non-leathery edible pods in the original publication.

The term pea originates from the Latin word pisum, which is the latinisation of the Greek πίσον (pison), neuter variant form of πίσος (pisos) 'pea'. It was adopted into English as the noun pease (plural peasen), as in pease pudding. However, by analogy with other plurals ending in -s, speakers began construing pease as a plural and constructing the singular form by dropping the -s, giving the term pea. This process is known as back-formation.