Pea is a pulse or fodder crop, but the word often refers to the seed or sometimes the pod of this flowering plant species. Peas are eaten as a vegetable.
Each pod contains several seeds (peas), which can have green or yellow cotyledons when mature. Botanically, pea pods are fruit, since they contain seeds and develop from the ovary of a pea flower.
Peas are annual plants, with a life cycle of one year. They are a cool-season crop grown in many parts of the world; planting can take place from winter to early summer depending on location. The average pea weighs between 100 and 360 milligrams. The immature peas are used as a vegetable, fresh, frozen or canned; varieties of the species typically called field peas are grown to produce dry peas like the split pea shelled from a matured pod. These are the basis of pease porridge and pea soup, staples of medieval cuisine; in Europe, consuming fresh immature green peas was an innovation of early modern cuisine.
A pea is a most commonly green, pod-shaped vegetable, the pod has a length of about 4 to 10 centimeters, the fruit is widely grown as a cool-season crop. The seeds may be planted as soon as the soil temperature reaches 10 °C, with the plants growing best at temperatures of 13 to 18 °C. They do not thrive in the summer heat of warmer temperate and lowland tropical climates, but do grow well in cooler, high-elevation, tropical areas. Many cultivars reach maturity about 60 days after planting.
Peas have both low-growing and vining cultivars. The vining cultivars grow thin tendrils from leaves that coil around any available support and can climb to be 1 to 2 metres high. A traditional approach to supporting climbing peas is to thrust branches pruned from trees or other woody plants upright into the soil, providing a lattice for the peas to climb. Branches used in this fashion are called pea sticks or sometimes pea brush. Metal fences, twine, or netting supported by a frame are used for the same purpose. In dense plantings, peas give each other some measure of mutual support. Pea plants can self-pollinate.
