Bird's-foot trefoil
Lotus corniculatus
Family · Fabaceae · Irritating
_Lotus_corniculatus_-_Plant_habit.jpg){kind=link}
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.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Uplands · Dunes and sand
Also known aseggs and bacon, birdsfoot
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.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
No approved contributions for this entry yet.
Nothing appears here without a person reading it first. Contributions do not replace the entry or its warnings: until a botanist confirms, what is written above stands.