The habitat of this species is grasslands, forest edges and shrub lands.

Red List Category

Red List Criteria

Year Assessed

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Justification

Lathyrus hterophyllus is reasonably common throughout its range, where it is found in several habitats which are not threatened; populations appear to be stable.

In Germany, some regional data considers it threatened, but not everywhere; in the Czech Republic populations are rare and scattered, while in Poland it is very rare.

Stable

The threats to this species are unknown.

The genus Lathyrus is listed in Annex I of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture as part of the grasspea gene pool.

The Millennium Seed Bank (Haywards Heath, United Kingdom) has two accessions of L. heterophyllus, further accessions are held at the Aegean Agricultural Research Institiute (Menemen, Turkey), ICARDA (Aleppo, Syria) and University of Reading (Reading, UK) gene banks.

EURISCO reports only two germplasm accessions held in European genebanks, one of which is reported to be of wild or weedy origin. This one wild accession originates from France and is also stored in France (Réseau Plantes fourragères et à gazon) (EURISCO Catalogue 2010).

In situ the species is likely to be passively conserved in many existing protected areas throughout its range but as its conservation in these sites is not actively monitored it may be subject to population loss over time from factors such as climate change.

In the Czeck Republic it is regarded as Critically Endangered on the national Red List. In Germany some regions in the south are listed as threatened.

Incorrect identification seems to be a problem in the field.

In France this species is protected in the eastern region of Franche-Comté (Association Tela Botanica 2010).