Pod defensive coloration (Caterpillar Mimicry) in the genus Pisum

[Andrew Barney]

I'll be disappointed if Swedish Red turns out not to make a good winter pea.   Are there other 'soup peas' that you like, or not a fan of it?

Honestly please keep experimenting with Sweedish Red, It is completely possible that i just did not cook it correctly. Other than store bought split peas I do not know if I've even eaten a true soup pea. I basically just tried to cook it like dry beans, and i could have failed for a number of reasons. I think i should have just soaked it longer and cooked it longer. Maybe a pressure cooker would have worked better than a crock pot.


But, from what I've read here and there i think there may actual be 3 or 4 basic types of peas. Fresh eating peas, field peas, soup peas, grey peas, marrowfat peas, and maple peas. The difference between all of these is something of a mystery to me, so if you know, please share. I suspect that soup peas may soak up water easier than say a field or a greypea, and if so it may take more work to eat such peas compared to others. Dwarf Grey Sugar sounds like it should be a greypea, but most people who would have used it as a greypea and not a fresh eating pea are probably long gone by now. Searching old cookbooks and old history books of Europe might yield more information. Hence my linking to that one recipe from Denmark that i mentioned earlier. Perhaps a culture that is used to eating peas in those fashions for many centuries would have more knowledge than mine.

[Steph S]

It's a new project for me, Andrew - exploring dry peas as an alternative to beans for winter food staple.   I grew mostly for seed this year - enough to grow a crop, and set aside just a few small samples to taste test this winter.   I have read all the classifications you mentioned but don't fully understand the differences.   
There's a brief discussion of this at Salt Spring Seeds, and this is what he says:
"There is a major division between fresh-eating peas and those best used as a dry bean. Although most shelling peas aren't very good soup peas and vice versa, many edible-pod peas are rich and flavourful when used in soups and curries.  Some soup peas break down quickly to make a rich broth and some retain their shape to pleasing effect. "
So I'm hoping that besides the yellow split peas which we traditionally use for soup, there will be peas that can be cooked and used as you would use a bean.
Different tastes and colors will also be a plus, for sure.   There are quite a few that have been recommended as dual purpose or all purpose peas, for both fresh eating and dried.
The Amplissimo has been touted as a substitute for chick peas, so I expect they are mild flavored.  I'm hoping the Swedish Red will retain their shape some. (such a nice color!)  So I think they would have to be pretty unpleasant to be rejected.    If they are awful, well I agree they would be worth crossing for the color alone.
My mother is doing the first taste tests.   Her cooking method is to soak the peas until they are fully plumped up, then cook by boiling as briefly as required - maybe only half an hour.  But the soak could be a full 24 hours.     I've also read that adding baking soda to the soak will soften the peas and reduce cooking times, but I haven't tried that yet.

[triffid]

As a resident of mushy pea land I'm obliged to warn against the evils of baking soda.

If you have soft water your peas soften up when cooked just fine.

Northerners & Scots with their soft water superiority make lovely melting mushy peas with ease.

Down here where the water's so hard it wears an eyepatch, you have to filter it to get the desired result. Or else the peas remain solid.

Bicarb is touted as a remedy but it tastes awful, in my opinion, and a lot of folk hate mushy peas because of it.

So if you're in a hard water area it's worth using filtered water if that is an option.

[Steph S]

That's good to know!  I had my doubts about bicarb as well. 
I was reading about the 'maple peas' last night.     Those who used soda also said to rinse it off really well.  But I think patience will serve as well, for us. 
https://adambalic.typepad.com/the_art_and_mystery_of_fo/2007/02/left_maple_peas.html

Some of the terms "maple" "grey" "soup" and "marrowfat" seem to be used interchangeably.   But the marrowfat is said to have been developed only in the 1800's, and replaced maple peas as a favorite in the UK.

IDK what kind the Bulroyd Bean are, but they are very large.  I found a pic of some pods torn open by ?? critter and you can see they're not edible pod, lots of toughening material there in the mature pod.   I did eat a few fresh pods in November which I thought to have no chance of maturing, and found them tender at the undeveloped stage.

[Diane Whitehead]

There are a couple of pages of pea history in The Random House Book of Vegetables by Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix.

I will  copy  just a few bits, though I could photograph more for you if you are interested.

Two species:  Pisum sativum, P. fulvum (with orange-buff flowers)  native to eastern Mediterranean from Turkey east to Syria, Iraq and Iran in rocky places and as weeds in grain fields.   Hard seed coats can remain dormant in soil for several years.

P sativum subspecies elatius - papillose seeds, flowers always bicoloured, and pods 7 - 12 mm broad
     var pumilio (syn P humile) is short and small-flowered.

P sativum subspecies sativum has smooth or wrinkled seeds and pods more than 12 mm broad.
    It has two cultivated varieties:  var sativum with white flowers, plain green stipules and large seeds
                                                  var arvense with bicoloured flowers, stipules with a red blotch and small seeds 4 - 8 mm across



Probably first cultivated in Turkey.

 Seeds have been found in Neolithic settlements in Jericho.  Reached China by AD 618 to 906.

Mangetout peas known in Europe by 1597.

Knight began breeding peas about 1787.

[Klaus Brugger]

and since we have now ventured into pea genetics in regard to pods for good snow / snap peas for the n and v genes, here is a nice photo that shows how to identify what genes your pea lines have or don't have. I think Templeton from AU said you can use a blue stain to show where the fiber is.

There's this paper by Rasmusson (1927) where he uses a lignin test (with phloroglucin) on pods of different pod parchment types to colour the sclerenchymatic tissue red (see pages 47 ff.). The pictures (especially pages 50 and 51) are nice, too.

Rasmusson, J. (1927). Genetically changed linkage values in Pisum. Hereditas, 10(1-2), pp. 1-152. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1601-5223.1927.tb02466.x

[Diane Whitehead]

I'm exhausted just reading part of the paper.  Rasmusson certainly did a thorough job.

Diane

[Klaus Brugger]

I'm exhausted just reading part of the paper.  Rasmusson certainly did a thorough job.

Where have the times gone when you could have a 152 page paper being accepted and published?

[Steve1]

I'm exhausted just reading part of the paper.  Rasmusson certainly did a thorough job.

Diane

It's an oldy but a goody... Used his lignin test in my thesis. Dosen't work on purple /red colored pods though. The phenols I think from memory in the anthocyanins react with the stain.

[Andrew Barney]

It's an oldy but a goody... Used his lignin test in my thesis. Dosen't work on purple /red colored pods though. The phenols I think from memory in the anthocyanins react with the stain.

This is good to know. Any ideas on an alternate test or stain for purple pods?

[Steve1]

This is good to know. Any ideas on an alternate test or stain for purple pods?

Not exactly. I looked at the three parents, and worked out via crossing and staining that the two non purples were ppVV and PPvv (F1 PpVv). Once you have that you can use test crosses. Also, constricted pod characteristic was very useful, as at least in the edible pod parents I used there was no significantly noticible parchment in the offspring. If you start with a wild type like fulvum (see Rasmussons image) its likely to be more difficult. I never saw large blobs of parchment as per Rasmusson in the modern edible cultuvars. These genes are both heat shock proteins, and my theory is that there is another gene triggered to produce parchment under high temperatures which is not activated in all cultivars. Yakumo and Shiraz both developed full parchment when temps got high. Hope that helps.