Herbariuma Backpackers project
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Greater bird's-foot trefoil

Lotus pedunculatus

Family · Fabaceae · Harmless

Greater bird's-foot trefoil (Lotus pedunculatus)Greater bird's-foot trefoil (Lotus pedunculatus)
André Karwath aka Aka, CC BY-SA 2.5 · Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0

The bird's-foot trefoil of waterlogged places: taller, more branched and with far more flowers per head than the common trefoil of dry verges. It marks watercourses and ditches that do not dry out.

Where it grows

Streams and ditches · Fields and pasture · Uplands

Also known as

marsh bird's-foot trefoil, big trefoil

In flower

How to tell it

An upright plant to a metre, with a hollow stem, unlike common trefoil, whose stem is solid. Heads of eight to fifteen yellow flowers, often veined red. Slender straight pods that split in a spiral and stand like open fingers.

What it is confused with

Bird's-foot trefoil

Lotus corniculatus

Harmless confusion

Squeeze the stem between your fingers: greater trefoil's is hollow and crushes, the common one's is solid. And the greater is far taller and grows only in damp places.

Open sheet →

What it is for

Forage in wet meadows, no use for walkers. Like all species of the genus, it holds small amounts of cyanogenic compounds: it does not go in the mouth.

Sources