Here is a picture, if anyone can tell me what it is I can stop this obsessive search and get back to my schoolwork. I thought it was a sweet pea, but can't find confirmation. They give a bean pod in the fall. The flowers are only 1-3 mm across. I like them alot because of their enormously nice looking green foliage that lasts in a vase for days. If they are a weed, they are very easy to pull, too, and that's nice.
There are many species in the genus, you must have brought up one from the Pacific Islands during a web search and thought that was the extent of it.
No no no, this was a website that detailed the species with photographs depicting what looked like exactly the same species. According to the website, it ranges around the world and has been introduced from China and the South Pacific into ecosystems around the globe, including Tennessee. In Australia it is considered a pest.
I don't think its your species (yours appears to have a single flower whereas this one has a one sided raceme, a curled spike with all the flowers facing the same direction ), but Vicia villosa, was listed as escaped in the Spokane area in 1952. Now it is everywhere. Any open meadow is sure to have some in it. Sometimes it's so thick you can hardly walk through it. It has the violet/purple flowers, but sometimes you can find it with completely white blooms. If any plant deserves the name weed, I think this is it. So I'm not surprised that there might be others in the family that are equally invasive. Harry
This is exactly it: http://www.hear.org/Pier/species/vicia_sativa_subsp_nigra.htm Description: "Climbing annual herbs up to 8 dm long, pubescent. Leaflets 6-16, opposite, linear, lanceolate to oblong or obcordate, 6-20 (-30) mm long, (1-) 4-12 mm wide, pubescent, apex acute to emarginate and mucronate, stipules ovate-acuminate, 3-5 mm long, 2-3 mm wide, with a purple nectary, usually with a dentate lateral lobe sometimes longer than the main body. Flowers axillary, 1-2 (-4) in condensed racemes; calyx teeth subequal, shorter to longer than the tube, lower 3 teeth with a conspicuous yellowish brown nectary; corolla reddish purple, 10-30 mm long, standard usually paler than wings and keel; style dorsoventrally flattened, bearded below the stigma along the abaxial side, apex encircled by hairs. Pods brown to nearly black, oblong, (25-) 35-80 mm long, 4-12 mm wide, not stipitate. Seeds subglobose to lenticular, 2.5-5 mm in diameter, hilum extending 1/6-1/5 of the circumference." (Wagner et al., 1999)
