Garden Pea (Pisum sativum)

Pisum sativum, commonly called the garden pea, is a cool season legume crop domesticated for its seeds, which develop inside pods that are themselves a fruit formed from the flower ovary; Carl Linnaeus gave the species its scientific name in 1753, meaning cultivated pea, though some modern taxonomies place it instead in the genus Lathyrus, a reclassification that remains disputed. The plant is an annual, with individual seeds weighing one hundred to three hundred sixty milligrams, developing green or yellow cotyledons inside pods roughly four to ten centimeters long. Archaeological evidence places early cultivation around 10,000 BC in the Near East and Central Asia, making the field pea one of the oldest domesticated crops at more than seven thousand years, and it subsequently spread through the Mediterranean, Europe and Asia. Immature peas and tender pods are eaten fresh, frozen or canned, and the crop is planted from winter through early summer depending on the region.