Vicia americanaMuhl. ex Willd.

American vetch

WFO wfo-0000174340 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Vicia americana, photographed by Marilynn Miller
fig. a Marilynn Miller, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-06 / obs. 204009921
Vicia americana, photographed by Andrew Tree
fig. b Andrew Tree, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202999288
Vicia americana, photographed by Andrew Tree
fig. c Andrew Tree, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204241598
Vicia americana, photographed by Kristin M. Tolle
fig. d Kristin M. Tolle, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203419337
Vicia americana, photographed by Mary Krieger
fig. e Mary Krieger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204347484
Vicia americana, photographed by Ted Cheeseman
fig. f Ted Cheeseman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202324445
Vicia americana, photographed by Michael Bunsen
fig. g Michael Bunsen, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203115314
Vicia americana, photographed by Mud_Skipper
fig. h Mud_Skipper, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202273035

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 1,848 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 1,848 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 43 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Abacosa americana (Muhl. ex Willd.) Alef.
  • Lathyrus diffusus G.Don
  • Lathyrus dissitifolius Nutt.
  • Lathyrus linearis Nutt.
  • Orobus diffusus Nutt.
  • Vicia acicularis Greene
  • Vicia americana f. angusta Hoover
  • Vicia americana f. oblonga Hoover
  • Vicia americana subsp. americana
  • Vicia americana subsp. minor (Hook.) Piper & Beattie
  • Vicia americana subsp. oregana (Nutt.) Abrams
  • Vicia americana subsp. truncata (Nutt.) Á.Löve & D.Löve
  • Vicia americana var. angustifolia Nees
  • Vicia americana var. lathyroides S.L.Welsh & N.D.Atwood
  • Vicia americana var. linearis (Nutt.) S.Watson
  • Vicia americana var. oregana (Nutt.) A.Nelson
  • Vicia americana var. pallida Suksd.
  • Vicia americana var. truncata (Nutt.) W.H.Brewer & S.Watson
  • Vicia americana var. villosa (Kellogg) F.J.Herm.
  • Vicia caespitosa A.Nelson
  • Vicia californica Greene
  • Vicia californica var. madrensis Jeps.
  • Vicia callianthema Greene
  • Vicia copelandi Eastw.

and 19 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.