Editing Chickpea (section)

==Taxonomy==

Chickpea (''Cicer arietinum'') is a member of the genus ''[[Cicer]]'' and the [[legume]] family, [[Fabaceae]].<ref name="Ahmad2005"/>{{rp|231}}  [[Carl Linnaeus]] described it in the first edition of ''[[Species Plantarum]]'' in 1753, marking the first use of [[binomial nomenclature]] for the plant.<ref name="VanDerMaesen1972"/>{{rp|11}}  Linnaeus classified the plant in the genus ''Cicer'', which was the Latin term for chickpeas,<ref name="VanDerMaesen1972"/>{{rp|2}} crediting [[Joseph Pitton de Tournefort]]'s 1694 publication {{lang|fr|Elemens de botanique, ou Methode pour connoitre les plantes}} which called it "Cicer arietinum".<ref name="VanDerMaesen1972"/>{{rp|11}}  Tournefort himself repeated the names of the plant that had been used since antiquity.<ref name="VanDerMaesen1972"/>{{rp|11}}

The specific epithet ''arietinum'' is based on the shape of the seed resembling the head of a ram.<ref name="VanDerMaesen1987"/>{{rp|3}}  In Ancient Greece, [[Theophrastus]] described one of the varieties of chickpea called "rams" in ''[[Historia Plantarum (Theophrastus)|Historia Plantarum]]''.<ref name="Theophrastus2"/>{{rp|173}}  The Roman writer on agriculture [[Columella|Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella]] wrote about chickpeas in the second book of ''De re rustica'', published in about 64 CE,<ref name="Columella"/>{{rp|xiv}} and said that the chickpea was called ''arietillum''.<ref name="Columella"/>{{rp|169}}  [[Pliny the Elder]] expanded further in ''[[Natural History (Pliny)|Naturalis Historia]]'' that this name was due to the seed's resemblance to the head of a ram.<ref name="Columella"/>{{rp|169}}

''Cicer arietinum'' is the [[type species]] of the genus.<ref name="VanDerMaesen1972"/>{{rp|10}}   The wild species ''[[Cicer reticulatum|C. reticulatum]]'' is interfertile with ''C. arietinum'' and is considered to be the progenitor of the cultivated species.<ref name="Gupta2017"/>  ''[[Cicer echinospermum|C. echinospermum]]'' is also closely related and can be [[Hybrid (biology)|hybridized]] with both ''C. reticulatum'' and ''C. arietinum'', but generally produce [[Sterility (physiology)|infertile]] seeds.<ref name="Gupta2017"/>