Cowpeas

Cowpeas—also known in the United States as bird peas, black-eyed peas, cornfield peas, conch peas, Congo peas, crowder peas, pigeon peas, red peas, Southern peas, whip-poor-will peas, zipper peas, gandules (Puerto Rico), and simply “peas”—are various warm-weather beans, descended from the wild African cowpeas Vigna unguiculata. Cultivated varieties were developed as early as 3000bce in Africa and came to the Americas with the slave trade. They remained a popular slave food, as reported in a Southern journal in 1850: “There is no vegetable of which negroes are more fond than of the common field pea” (quoted in Breedon, 1980, p. 98).