Your Sweet Pea Flower - DMookie's Page

Origin & History

The sweet pea is a climbing annual native to Sicily and southern Italy. Its ancestry can be traced back to the C17th when it's richly colored but relatively small flowers possessed a powerful and attractive fragrance. These qualities were enough to ensure its survival after it reached these shores, courtesy of a Sicilian monk, Franciscus Cupani, who sent seeds to Dr. Robert Uvedale, a schoolmaster of Enfield, in 1699. Cupani clearly considered the plant to be of some importance, because he also sent seed to Commelin in Amsterdam at the same time. Although the seed sent by Cupani was of a purple/maroon bicolor, early writings refer to a pure white variety and to a pink/white bicolour, citing Ceylon as a possible source. Recent research however, has proved that the bicolor now known by such names as "Cupani" or "Cupani Original", is the most primitive form and is therefore the original wild species. South American varieties such as "Quito" and "Matucana" appear to be derived from cultivated material and probably date from the 1920s.

Sentiment & Symbolism

The Sweet Pea is the flower of the month for April. The sweet pea is popularly known as the "Queen of Annuals". The name "sweet pea" is believed to have first been used by the poet Keats (1795-1821). The Latin name for the sweet pea is Lathyrus odoratus. This was the name chosen by the great Swedish naturalist Linnaeus to replace the former, less memorable, but highly descriptive Lathyrus distoplatyphyllus, hirsutus, mollis, magno et peramaeno flore, odoro given to it in 1701 by Caspar Commelin. The genus Lathyrus contains about 150 species. 1999 is the tercentenary of the introduction of the sweet pea to England. The original introduction had rather small flowers, but was very strongly scented. Much early work in genetics was done at Cambridge University, using sweet peas as the subject. Sweet peas come in a very wide range of colors, but not yellow. Early expectations of being able to breed a yellow sweet pea by conventional means were already fading rapidly by 1915. The Spencer, Cupid and Winter Flowering strains of sweet pea all arose from chance mutations rather than from planned breeding. Sweet pea flowers naturally self pollinate while still in bud. Sweet peas are not edible, being somewhat poisonous if eaten in quantity. Sweet peas are widely grown in Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the USA. By 1913 about 1700 acres of sweet peas were being grown in California to meet the annual demand for some 450 tons of seed, about half of which went to Europe, mostly to England. Many of the most prominent names in the annals of the Sweet Pea in the USA belonged to natives of Scotland. George W. Kerr was a native of Dumfries, J. Harrison Dick was from the Lothians, and Frank G. Cuthbertson was the son of William Cuthbertson, V.M.H. of Dobbie and Co., Edinburgh. Market research consistently finds sweet peas to be one of the top three favorite flowers in the UK.

Meaning

Good-by, Departure, Blissful Pleasure, Thank You For A Lovely Time.