A few crosses of P. abyssinicum with wild pea of umbria and possibly some garden peas are showing success. This is a very interesting pea. It is small, only about 2 ft tall with serrated leaves and single pretty pink flowers per peduncle, except for one plant which has two flowers per peduncle. It is also fairly early, producing flowers at around 70 days for me.
My hope is to create a population of dark-seeded peas that have the abundant basel node tillering of wild pea of umbria, are bushy and do not need trellising, and are early.
Oooh, that’s cool! Whenever you have a few spare seeds to share, I bet Andrew would love to have some of this cross to add to his “new cold frame pea” breeding project:
Nice, I was unaware of this project but it seems they are doing it for edible podded peas. I know these are typically used for dry peas but will have to test the pod edibility soon.
I’m pretty sure he’d be delighted with any nifty germplasm you have to offer, especially interesting crosses. He keeps encouraging me to do hand-crosses this spring of everything good I’ve got, so that I can send him seeds.
