south African evergreen partly woody vine grown for its clusters of rosy purple flowers followed by edible pods like snap beans; also grown as green manure; sometimes placed in genus Dolichos
a FAIRY TALE by Hans Christian ANDERSEN in which a young woman proves that she is a princess by noticing that there is a PEA (= a small round green vegetable) under the pile of MATTRESS es she has been sleeping on. A queen has put the PEA under her bed as a test to see if the young woman will feel it, because only a real princess would be so delicate that she would notice a small PEA. As a result, the queen allows the young woman to marry her son, a prince.