Plants of South Eastern New South Wales

Lotus corniculatus var. corniculatus

Flowers and leaves. Photographer Don Wood, Tuross Road, east of Cooma

Pods and leaves. Photographer Zoya Akulova, California USA

Flowering plants. Photographer Barry Breckling, California, USA

Line drawing in Britton, N.L., and A. Brown. 1913 An illustrated flora of the northern United States, Canada and the British Possessions

Common name

Bird's-foot trefoil

Family

Fabaceae

Where found

Forest, woodland, grassy areas, roadsides, and moist sites.  Widespread. Uncommon on the coast and ranges south of the Sydney region.

Notes

Introduced annual or perennial herb, sprawling or to 0.9 m tall. Stems hairless and glaucous to sparsely hairy. Leaves alternating up the stems, compound, with 5 leaflets, each 0.25-1.5 cm long, 0.5-8 mm wide, sparsely hairy, tips pointed or blunt. Flowers 7-16 mm long, pea shaped, with 5 petals, 2 joined together to form the keel, yellow, sometimes with red veins on the standard petal, in clusters of 1-8 flowers. Flowers Spring to Summer.

Varieties not recognised in NSW.

PlantNET description:  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Lotus~corniculatus (accessed 13 April 2021)