The Kinds.

            1. There be divers sorts of Peas, differing very notably in many respects, some of the garden, and others of the field, and yet both counted tame: some with tough skins or membranes in the cod, and others have none at all, whose cods are to be eaten with the peas when they be young as those of the young Kidney Bean: others carrying their fruit in the tops of the branches, are esteemed and taken for Scottish Peas, which is not very common. There be divers sorts growing wild, as shall be declared.

The Description.

            1. The great Pea hath long stalks, hollow, brittle, of a whitish green colour, branched, and spread upon the ground, unless they be held up with props set near unto them: the leaf thereof is wide and long, made up of many little leaves which be smooth, white, growing upon one little stalk or stem, and set one right against another: it hath also in the upper part long clasping tendrils, wherewith it foldeth itself upon props and stays standing next unto it: the flower is white and hath about the middle of it a purple spot: the cods be long, round Cilindriforma [cylindrical]: in which are contained seeds greater than Ochri, or little Peas, which, being dry are cornered, and that unequal, of colour sometimes white and sometimes grey: the roots are small.

            2. The field Pea is so very well known to all, that it were a needless labour to spend time about the description.

Fig. 1732. Kinds of Pea (3-6)

            3. Tufted Peas are like unto those of the field, or of the garden in each respect, the difference consisteth only in that, that this plant carrieth his flowers and fruit in the tops of the branches in a round tuft or umbel, contrary to all other of his kind, which bring forth their fruit in the midst, and alongst the stalks: the root is thick and fibrous.

            4. Peas without skins in the cods differ not from the precedent, saving that the cods hereof want that tough skinny membrane in the same, which the hogs cannot eat by reason of the toughness; whereas the other may be eaten cods and all the rest, even as Kidney beans are: which being so dressed are exceeding delicate meat.

            5. The wild Pea differeth not from the common field Pea in stalk and leaves, saving that this wild kind is somewhat lesser: the flowers are of a yellow colour, and the fruit is much lesser.

            6. The Pea whose root never dies differeth not from the wild Pea, only his continuing without sowing, being once sown or planted, setteth forth the difference.

The Place.

            Peas are set and sown in gardens, as also in the fields in all places of England. The Tufted Peas are in reasonable plenty in the West part of Kent, about Sennock or Sevenoaks; in other places not so common.

            The wild Peas do grow in pastures and arable fields in divers places, especially about the field belonging unto Bishops Hatfield in Hertfordshire.

The Time.

            They be sown in the spring time, like as be also other pulses, which are ripe in Summer; they prosper best in warm weather, and easily take harm by cold, especially when they flower.

The Names.

            The great Pea is called in Latin Pisum romanum, or Pisum maius: in English, Roman Peas, or the greater Peas, also garden Peas: of some, Branch Peas, French Peas, and Rouncivals. Theophrastus and other old writers do call it in Greek Pisos, in Latin also Pisum: in Low Dutch, Roomsche erwiten: in French, Pois. The little Pea is called of the apothecaries everywhere Pisum, and Pisum minus: it is called in English, Little Pea, or the Common Pea.

The Temperature and Virtues.

            A. The Pea, as Hippocrates saith, is less windy than Beans, but it passeth sooner through the belly. Galen writeth, that Peas are in their whole substance like unto Beans, and be eaten after the same manner that Beans are, notwithstandling they differ from them in these two things, both because they are not so windy as be the beans, and also for that they have nor a cleansing faculty, and therefore they do more slowly descend through the belly. They have no effectual quality manifest, and are in a mean between those things which are of good and bad juice, that nourish much and little, that be windy and without wind, as Galen in his book Of the Faculties of Nourishments hath written of these and of beans.