Lathyrus japonicus
species of legume
Lathyrus japonicus, the sea pea, beach pea, circumpolar pea or sea vetchling, is a species of flowering plant in the legume family Fabaceae, native to temperate coastal areas of the Northern Hemisphere, and Argentina.
It is a herbaceous perennial growing trailing stems 50–80 cm (20–31 in) long, typically on sand and gravel storm beaches. The leaves are waxy glaucous green, 5–10 cm (2.0–3.9 in) long, pinnate, with 2-5 pairs of leaflets, the terminal leaflet usually replaced by a twining tendril. The flowers are broad, with a dark purple standard petal and paler purple wing and keel petals; they are produced in racemes of up to twelve flowers.
Description
Lathyrus japonicus is a perennial plant. The stem grows to 15 to 30 cm (6 to 12 in) and is limp, has no wings and is often hairless. The leaves are alternate, greyish green and somewhat succulent, almost stalkless with large, wide stipules. The leaf blades are pinnate with three to five pairs of narrow lanceolate leaflets with blunt tips, entire margins and a terminal tendril. The inflorescence has a long stem and five to twelve purple flowers, each 14 to 20 mm (0.6 to 0.8 in) long, turning bluer as they age. These have five sepals and five petals and are irregular with a standard, two wings and a fused keel.
“Lathyrus japonicus” enters the record as species of legume. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lathyrus, japonicus and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q21125. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lathyrus japonicus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.