Test on Vintels

[blueadzuki]

Hi all,

In this thread, I am chronicling my tests on the "vintels", those odd seeds I found in the lentil bags, and cannot tell if they are some sort of lentil or some sort of vetch, hence the name I am using. I went with this one since "letch" already has a meaning in English (okay it doesn't when you spell it with the "t", but when you say it, it sounds like "Lech" and I prefer people not to get offended.) For those who have forgotten this is what the original seed looks like.


About a week ago I decided to take a handful of the seed and sow in in a pot, to see if I could work out the identity in advance by seeing the leaves as they developed (with a whole jar of the things, I could easily spare that much)

As of this point here are the results


Results as of this point are.....ambiguous. The leaves certainly look like lentil leaves (factoring for the fact the plants are young and the first true leaves of many legumes are much shorter and have far fewer leaflets than later ones) but I have seen pictures of vetch leaves online that also look a lot like these. I have a nagging suspicion that I won't have a conclusive answer to this until the middle of the actual outside growing season when the ones I will sow outside actually flower (and even then, I'm going to have to bank on the hope that, if they ARE a vetch of some sort, they're one of the ones whose flowers are purple. If they are a yellow flowered one, I may not know until pod formation, if then.

Note there appears to be one albino/chlorophyll deficient plant (the gold leafed one) At this point I see no reason to pull it so I'll see if it's just late to green up.

Interestingly, there does appear to be one plant in the pot that is different and more likely to be a vetch (the lentils had something along the order of at least 12-15 different types of non lentil [or, at least non standard lentil] legume seed in them. Some are clearly vetch, some are as ambiguous as these. But since if often takes a good eye to tell one from another, the odds of one seed from one of the other types getting in is entirely possible.)


Not that, while shorter (it's the one I'm NOT pushing back) it already has far more leaflets per leaf than any of the others and (while the picture is a little too blurry to see this clearly) the leaflets have tiny hairs on them (unlike all of the others)

[darrenabbey]

This reminds me of something I was reading recently about how persistent weeds in crop fields have recurrently become secondary crops. Barley from rye fields, for example. I wonder if the vetch seeds you've been isolating are larger than wild vetch seeds found away from crop fields.

[blueadzuki]

Well, that's hard to say. Certainly, they are a bit bigger than the strain of V. sativa I am used to finding in the Indian stuff (along with V. hirsuta, some common vetch shows up from time to time in the coriander hunts). But I am well aware that, if this stuff IS a vetch, it is a different species (or at least, a different subspecies) that that. The shape(s) is/are different. Common vetch seed is almost spherical, this stuff is a bit more elongated pointy (and if one of the others is the same stuff, occasionally almost cylindrical/drum shaped). And the common vetch I typically find has yellow cotyledons, not bright orange ones. I am also aware that the common vetch I am used to finding is of the microsperma subspecies (yes there is a subspecies called that for both vetches and lentils) so I assume it's seed are on the small size of the species naturally. On the other hand, the seeds are smaller than some of the V. villosa samples I have.

The others vary quite a bit. most are more or less the same seed size as this one. One tends to be rather smaller. One of the seeds in the vial with the rough skinned seed is HUGE, or it would be if I had the whole thing, instead of half (it's a perpendicular break, however, and I think the half I have is the top, so it may still be viable.) Whole, that one would be almost the size of a small pea.

[blueadzuki]

Actually I may have a guess. Look at this image
www.smithseed.com/images_and_loops/covercrop%20images/vetch-seed-comparison-lg.jpg

to me, the Cahaba White seed looks awfully similar to what I have . I also seem to remember a similar vetch called Monrovia (or something like that)

[steev]

How is this ventil different from all the others? It's a yentl.

[blueadzuki]

Update

WE HAVE FLOWERS!!!!


Well, we have flowers on one or two of them. THOSE one's are now obviously revealed as vetches; the flowers are purple/pink bicolor (lentils are usually yellow) and borne singly (lentils are usually paired). Of course since there is obviously more than one kind of plant in that pot, that doesn't necessarily mean the others are all vetches too. Still waiting on the two weird ones from the original planting (the ones that look like leaves on a string; no compound leaflets.)

[blueadzuki]

First seeds harvested.

[blueadzuki]

May 29, 2015 17:40:02 GMT -5 blueadzuki said:

Still waiting on the two weird ones from the original planting (the ones that look like leaves on a string; no compound leaflets.)

Wait's over.






Obviously a different species, but no clue which