Snow pea relationship—and are therefore a useful companion plant, especially useful to grow intercropped with green, leafy vegetables that benefit from high nitrogen content in their soil. Snow peas can be grown in open fields during cool seasons and can thus be cultivated during winter and spring seasons. Storage of the pea with films of polymethylpentene at a temperature of 5 °C and a concentration of oxygen and carbon dioxide of 5 kPa augments the shelf life, internal and external characteristics of the plant. Austrian scientist and monk Gregor Mendel used peas which he called "Pisum saccharatum" in his famous experiments demonstrating
Gregor Mendel next thirty-five years. His paper was criticized at the time, but is now considered a seminal work. Notably, Charles Darwin was not aware of Mendel's paper, and it is envisaged that if he had been aware of it, genetics as we know it now might have taken hold much earlier. Mendel's scientific biography thus provides an example of the failure of obscure, highly original, innovators to receive the attention they deserve. Mendel began his studies on heredity using mice. He was at St. Thomas's Abbey but his bishop did not like one of his friars studying animal sex, so Mendel