Spiny restharrow
Ononis spinosa
Family · Fabaceae · Irritating
The spiny pink-flowered legume of trodden pastures whose name, in several languages, comes from the same complaint: the root is so strong and so deep it caught the plough and stopped the ox.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Uplands · Montado
Also known asrestharrow, cammock
How to tell it
Rigid branches armed with straight, simple spines, which separates it from the branch-spined brooms. Three small toothed leaflets, sticky and strong-smelling when rubbed. Pink pea flowers, solitary in the axils.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
The root had traditional use as a diuretic in European folk medicine, with registered preparations still today. A note that stays on the sheet: not to be used on one's own initiative by anyone with kidney or heart problems.
With documented traditional uses. Not a therapeutic indication and not a dose.