Prickly caterpillar plant
Scorpiurus muricatus
Family · Fabaceae · Harmless
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The legume whose fruit is a perfect caterpillar: a spiral-coiled green pod covered in knobs, fooling anyone at first sight and once used as a joke at dinner tables.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Town and roadside · Scrubland
Also known ascaterpillar plant, scorpion's tail
How to tell it
A prostrate plant with simple, entire, elongated leaves, unlike almost every legume. Small yellow flowers, one to five on a long stalk. The fruit is unmistakable: coiled in a tight spiral, green, covered in rows of knobs or soft spines, exactly like a caterpillar.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
No direct food use, but it is valued forage and a soil-improving plant. It is worth it as a demonstration: it is a legume with a simple leaf, which breaks the easy rule that legumes always have compound leaves.