Lentil

Vicia lens, the lentil (also placed in Lens as Lens culinaris), is a slender, much-branched annual legume 15 to 45 cm tall with soft, hairy, angular stems. The leaves are pinnately compound with four to seven pairs of small oblong leaflets, the axis often ending in a short tendril or bristle. One to four small pale flowers, white to pale blue or lilac, are borne on slender axillary stalks. The short, flattened, oblong pod is broad and contains one or two characteristic biconvex, lens-shaped seeds that vary in colour from green and brown to red and black according to variety. One of the earliest domesticated crops of the Fertile Crescent, the lentil is cultivated throughout warm-temperate and subtropical regions as a nutritious pulse and is among humanity's oldest food legumes.