Common pea
Scientific Name: – Pisum sativum
The pea is most commonly the small spherical seed or the seed-pod of the pod fruit Pisum sativum. Each pod contains several peas. Peapods are botanically a fruit, since they contain seeds developed from the ovary of a (pea) flower. However, peas are considered to be a vegetable in cooking. The name is also used to describe other edible seeds from the Fabaceae such as the pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan), the cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), and the seeds from several species of Lathyrus. P. sativum is an annual plant, with a life cycle of one year. It is a cool season crop grown in many parts of the world; planting can take place from winter to early summer depending on location. The average pea weighs between 0.1 and 0.36Śćgrams. The immature peas (and in snow peas the tender pod as well) are used as a vegetable, fresh, frozen or canned; varieties of the species typically called field peas are grown to produce dry peas like the split pea shelled from the matured pod. These are the basis of pease porridge and pea soup, staples of medieval cuisine; in Europe, consuming fresh immature green peas was an innovation of Early Modern cuisine. The wild pea is restricted to the Mediterranean basin and the Near East. The earliest archaeological finds of peas date from the neolithic era of current Syria, Turkey and Jordan. In Egypt, early finds date from ca. 4800äóń4400ŚćBC in the Nile delta area, and from ca. 3800äóń3600ŚćBC in Upper Egypt. The pea was also present in Georgia in the 5th millennium BC. Farther east, the finds are younger. Peas were present in Afghanistan ca. 2000ŚćBC, in Harappa, Pakistan, and in northwest India in 2250äóń1750ŚćBC. In the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, this pulse crop appears in the Gangetic basin and southern India.
