Great wood-vetch

Vicia dumetorum, commonly known as great wood-vetch or thicket vetch, is a perennial herbaceous climber in the family Fabaceae native to deciduous and mixed woodlands of central and eastern Europe, extending east into the Caucasus and parts of western Asia. It grows from a creeping rhizome, sending up slender angled stems that scramble and climb to 1 to 2 metres through shrubs and forest-edge vegetation by means of branched terminal tendrils. The pinnately compound leaves bear three to six pairs of broadly ovate to elliptic leaflets 1.5 to 4 centimetres long with a smooth, somewhat glaucous surface, and a pair of conspicuous semicircular toothed stipules at the leaf base. From early to midsummer it produces axillary racemes of five to fifteen drooping pea-shaped flowers, each 12 to 18 millimetres long, in shades of dull purple or wine-red, fading to greenish-brown after pollination. The fruit is a flattened glabrous legume containing several rounded seeds. The species prefers semi-shaded, calcareous, mesic forest habitats.