Herbariuma Backpackers project
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Bird's-foot trefoil

Lotus corniculatus

Family · Fabaceae · Irritating

Toxic
Bird's-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus)Bird's-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus)
Ivar Leidus, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0

The yellow flowers with orange streaks that fill banks and meadows, giving pods in groups of three to five, spread like the toes of a bird's foot. It is fodder, not food.

Where it grows

Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Uplands · Dunes and sand

Also known as

eggs and bacon, birdsfoot

In flower

How to tell it

Thin straight pods grouped in a fan at the tip of each stalk: the mark behind its name in every language. Yellow pea flowers, often red in bud. A five-leaflet leaf, three together and two at the base.

What it is confused with

No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.

What it is for

Excellent livestock fodder and green manure, and one of the best plants for bees and butterflies. Not a plant for human consumption: it contains cyanogenic glycosides, in low amounts but enough to make it not worth it.

Sources