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Low toxicity☠️ To avoid

⚠️ Meadow vetchling

Lathyrus pratensis · Fabaceae

🌳 Temperate Europe🏔️ Mountains
🧠 To remember it“Grass pea = stay away in famine” — lathyrism (spastic paralysis of the legs) has never hit casual foragers, only populations forced to rely on it as a staple food for months on end during famines in India, Ethiopia, or Bangladesh.
Meadow vetchling — Lathyrus pratensis

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

A climbing meadow legume, close relative of the vetch, but reduced to a single pair of narrow leaflets per leaf (instead of several pairs like in true vetches), ending in a simple tendril. Bright yellow flowers in small clusters of 3-10, unlike the pink-purple flowers of common vetches. It is the seed of the Lathyrus genus, when consumed in large quantities and repeatedly (historical famine conditions), that carries the risk of lathyrism — not the fresh plant during occasional foraging.

  1. leaves reduced to ONE SINGLE pair of narrow lanceolate leaflets, ending in a tendril
  2. bright yellow flowers (unlike the pink-purple of true vetches), in loose clusters of 3-10
  3. angled winged stem, climbing via tendrils
  4. flattened, dark brown to black pods when mature
  5. grows in mats in meadows, often intertwined with grasses
Size30-120 cm (climbing stem)
FloweringMay-August
Habitatmeadows, hedgerows, forest edges, ditch banks

⚠️ Not to be confused with

Common vetch (edible in moderation) (Vicia sativa)the reverse of common usage: vetch is better tolerated for consumption, whereas vetchling carries the real risk of lathyrism in cases of massive, repeated intake

To tell them apart: meadow vetchling has a single pair of leaflets per leaf and yellow flowers; common vetch has several pairs of leaflets and pink-purple flowers

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

  • the genus Lathyrus was historically cultivated in the form of grass pea (Lathyrus sativus) as a emergency crop during food shortages, precisely because it withstands drought when other crops fail — it is this exact resilience that exposed entire populations to lathyrism during prolonged famines
Sources (3)

No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.