Wild Sweet Pea Traditional Cache

Wild Sweet Pea is perennial and odorless. It can become invasive.

Wild Sweet Pea

Lathyrus latifolius, the perennial peavine, perennial pea, broad-leaved everlasting-pea, or just everlasting pea, is a robust, sprawling perennial in the Pea Family Fabaceae.

It is native to Europe but is present on other continents, such as North America and Australia,where it is most often seen along roadsides.

Annual sweet peas are delightfully fragrant and come in a variety of colors. However, the perennial sweet pea, Lathyrus latifolius, which has naturalized along the roadsides of North America, does not smell at all. A native of Southern Europe and Northern Africa, it has been around for a long time—probably since the early 1700′s.

According to his records, Thomas Jefferson planted it in his garden in 1807. And it was very popular in England during Victorian times when many cultivated varieties were grown. Some of the cultivated varieties in England were even named after royalty and other celebrities of the time.

Today, the plant is known to be tough, with Houdini-like tendencies, since it regularly has escaped from gardens in most of the states in USA. However, it has not flourished in Florida because of the heat and humidity, nor in North Dakota or Alaska because of the extreme temperature.

It seems to grow enthusiastically everywhere else, naturalizing in open fields and in abandoned gardens where it quickly gets out of control. The plant propagates easily from seed and is known by a variety of common names such as perennial sweet pea, Brede Lathrys broadleaf pea, everlasting sweet pea, pea vine, and wild sweet pea.

It is usually a purplish pink, but occasionally deep purple or pure white. Admire it from a distance, for it is both toxic and invasive.

Toxicity. Unlike the edible pea, there is evidence that seeds of members of the genus Lathyrus are toxic if ingested in quantity. A related species, Lathyrus sativus, is grown for human consumption but when it forms a major part of the diet it causes symptoms of toxicity called lathyrism.

A study found that eating small amounts of wild peas is perfectly safe — so long as you are not allergic to them, and allergies are something no one can predict. 

The Cache is a camoed, big "micro" pill bottle with a different kind of lid. You need to push down the tab on the bottle while you unscrew the lid to open it. It has a rolled log with rubber band, that is needed to hold the log together, so it can easily come out of the cache. It is tied in. Please BYOP, no tweezers and put back as you found it.