Annual or biennial twining herbs, 90-180 cm tall, all hairless. Even pinnately compound leaves, apex tendrils, stipules ovate. Flowers white or purplish red, solitary or 1-3 arranged in racemoaxillary, palpate on inner style, cleistogamous, petals butterfly-shaped. The pod is oblong or flat in shape, and can be divided into soft pods and hard pods according to whether there is an inner leather plasma membrane and its thickness. Seeds can be round cylindrical, oval, oblate, concave round, each pod 2-10, mostly green, there are also yellow white, red, rose, brown, black and other colors of the variety. It can be divided into wrinkled skin and round grains according to the skin, and becomes yellow after drying. There are a large number of lateral roots growing on the root, and there are nodule in both the taproot and lateral roots. Because of its diverse traits and cleistogamous pollination, Mendel used it as a crop for genetic experiments.

Peas can grow in poor soil, like cool and wet climate, spring sowing in mid-February, autumn sowing in mid-October is appropriate. It can be interplanted with corn, mulberry, fruit trees, tobacco and other crops, but it should not be cultivated continuously in the same place. The seeds need to be soaked in cold water before sowing, and the application of nitrogen fertilizer helps the stem and leaves to grow and promote the growth of the pea plants, especially when the pod needs watering. When the height of the plant reaches about 30 cm, it can be set up for climbing. It is easy to have downy mildew, keratosis and pea Mosaic during flowering. Pests include aphids, leaf miners, pea elephants, etc. The harvest is usually done in several batches. The yield of the edible bean varieties can reach 3.2 tons of dry beans per hectare, the edible pod varieties can reach 16 tons of fresh pods per hectare, and the special edible seedling varieties can be harvested multiple times, and the cumulative yield can reach 12.8 tons of tender shoots per hectare.

Peas are a common bean food, the seeds of which taste sweet, can be cooked alone or with other ingredients, and can be canned. After soaking and crushing, the seeds can be used as pea puree to make pea cake and pea cake. Fried pea seeds can be used as snack food, and dried seeds can also be used to make starch. The pods of Dutch beans and sweet snap beans are edible. Pea shoots can also be picked and eaten, called "pea tips", because of their spreading shape, it is called "dragon beard" in some places. The stems and leaves can also be used as livestock feed. Because the flowers are beautiful, they can also be planted for viewing.