The common vetch plants in my garden have begun to flower. These plants are from seeds that I collected in Rusheen Bay park last autumn. Rusheen Bay, near Barna Woods, is a wonderful, if less well-known, public park in Galway, and the council park staff maintain it in a thoughtful way. As a result, there is a wonderful wildflower meadow in the park, with a great range of biodiversity. Alas, it is beyond my 2Km limit so I’ll have to make do with enjoying the vetch until the travel restrictions are lifted.
Vetch seeds form in pods, like peas, and have a distinctive distribution mechanism. As the seeds ripen, the pod begin to coil, like a spring. Eventually, the pod can coil no further, and ‘explodes’, scattering the seeds away from the home plant, aiding the distribution and propagation of the plant. I discovered this the hard way – I had gathered a handful of pods from the meadow, and put them in the open storage box beside the gear stick in my car while driving home. The motion of the car was enough to set them off, and the pods began to pop. So, my first task in planting them at home was to retrieve them from every nook and cranny in the car.