GRAM or CHICK-PEA, called also Egyptian pea or Bengal gram, Cicer arietinum, so named from the resemblance of its seed to a ram's head. It is a member of the family Leguminosae, largely cultivated as a pulse-food in the south of Europe, Egypt and western Asia as far as India, but is not known undoubtedly wild. The plant is an annual herb with flexuose branches, and alternately arranged pinnately compound leaves, with small, oval leaflets. The flowers are borne singly in the leaf-axils on a stalk about half the length of the leaf and jointed and bent in the middle ; the corolla is blue-purple. The inflated pod, 1 to 12 in. long, contains two roundish seeds. It was cultivated by the Greeks in Homer's time under the name erebinthos. Alphonse de Candolle (Origin of Cultivated Plants) suggests that the plant originally grew wild in the countries to the south of the Caucasus and to the north of Persia. In the East the seeds are eaten raw or cooked in various ways, both ripe and unripe, and when roasted and ground serve the same purposes as ordinary flour. In Europe the seeds are used as an ingredient in soups.
The seed of Phaseolus Mungo, or green gram, a form of which plant with black seeds is termed black gram, is an important article of diet among the labouring classes in India. A variety, var radiatus, also known as green gram, is perhaps the most esteemed of the leguminous plants of India, where the meal of its seed enters into the composition of the more delicate cakes and dishes. Horse gram, Doliclios biflorus, which supplies in Madras the place of the chick-pea, affords seed which, when boiled, is ex tensively employed as a food for horses and cattle in south India, where also it is eaten in curries.
See H. Drury, The Useful Plants of India (1873) ; U. C. Dutt, Materia Medica of the Hindus (Calcutta, 1877) ; G. Watt, Dictionary of the Economic Products of India (189o) .