De suikererwt 'Sugar Magnolia' werd omstreeks 1995 ontwikkeld door Dr. Alan Kapuler.
"Opal Creek, Sugar Magnolia and Spring Blush are all vine peas bred by myself during the mid 1990's as a public domain plant breeder. They are all snap cultivars. Sugar Magnolia has purple pods and 8-10' vines. Spring Blush has green pods with a purple blush and 8-10'vines. Sugar Magnolia and Spring Blush are hypertendril cultivars. The hypertendril morphocharacteristic came from a cross of a vine green snap vine pea with a bush parsley pea. Hypertendrils hold on to one another in a way that allows one or two stakes to hold up many feet of pea vines.
When i began growing peas and found out that there were no organic snap vine peas available, i asked the company who
sold them about growing them organically. They said they would not grow them organically nor would they allow me to grow them organically since they had a PVP on the cultivar. So i decided to learn how to cross peas and found a copy of Mendel's paper where he illustrates how one unfolds the pea flower and can do cross pollinations. I got a hand lens, did some crosses, began collecting heirloom cultivars and thought that multicolor peas would be a good direction. First came Opal Creek, named for the courageous people, mostly hippies, who stood up for and protected a part of the old growth forest holding huge coniferous trees many hundreds of years old. The yellow color came from the heirloom Golden Sweet, which is not very sweet.
Unexpectedly the foliage of Opal Creek is very sweet coming the the green snap vine parent.
Then i grew some Parsley Bush Shell Peas. I had just picked some Purple Snap Vine Peas from the previous years selections and when i tasted them, they were bitter. I was upset. A line of Parsley Bush Peas was right before me. So i crossed the purple podded vine pea with the Parsley Bush Peas and several years later selected Sugar Magnolia which is a vine with purple pods. It also has hypertendrils, an unexpected bonus from the tendril-less Parsley parent interacting with the three-finger tendril of the snap vine parent." (Alan Kapular, 23/01/2015)