Bitter Vetch (or Ervil)

Bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia), also known as ervil, is a legume that belong to the same genus as the fava bean (Vicia faba). It produces pods, each containing four seeds shaped like a grape seed and about the size of a grapefruit pip, that ripen in the late summer. The plant is endemic in areas that encompass Anatolia and northern Iraq, with an extension south along the Anti-Lebanon Mountains of Syria and Lebanon.

Traces of the earliest domesticated instances were recovered from several archaeological sites in Turkey, which have an uncorrected radiocarbon dating of the 7th and 6th millennia BC[1]. The first 'tamed' bitter vetches in Europe were discovered in Hissar, southeast Serbia and dated to 1,350–1,000 BC.

[Bitter vetch beans - Image courtesy of flora.org.il]

Bitter vetch is nowadays primarily used as fodder, but in prehistoric times the beans were also consumed by humans. These days, the beans are occasionally eaten in soups.

The plant is still considered toxic for humans, but it has been almost continuously selected for lower levels of the toxic amino acid canavanine during the last 10,000 years. Compared to other Vicia species the canavanine levels are low.

Pliny the Elder (23-79AD) states in his 'Naturalis Historia' (Book XVIII, Chapter 38) that the fitch (bitter vetch) has medicinal value like vetch (broad bean), citing the letters of Emperor Augustus where the emperor wrote that he regained his health from a diet of bitter vetch.

If you are wondering where the words 'vetch' and 'ervil' originated, the answer is somewhat surprising. Vetch stems from the same root as the genus it belongs to: Vicia. Ervil is reminiscent of Dutch 'erwt and German 'erbst' and ultimately derives from the Greek word orobus ('fava bean'). Remember that a 'v' is often pronounced as a 'b'.

[1] Zohary, Hopf, Weiss, Domestication of Plants in the Old World: The Origin and Spread of Domesticated Plants in Southwest Asia, Europe, and the Mediterranean Basin, 4th edition - 2012