Yellow restharrow
Ononis natrix
Family · Fabaceae · Harmless
The sticky subshrub with yellow flowers veined red, smelling strong and unpleasant and clinging to the fingers. It is on dry verges and banks throughout the Peninsula.
Roadsides and waste ground · Scrubland · Fields and pasture · Dunes and sand
Also known aslarge yellow restharrow, goat root
How to tell it
A plant covered in gland-tipped hairs making it sticky to touch and giving a strong scent, between resinous and unpleasant. Leaves of three toothed leaflets. Yellow flowers one to two centimetres, with red or brownish lines on the standard, in leafy racemes. No thorns.
What it is confused with
Small restharrow
Ononis minutissima
Both have yellow flowers and are sticky. The small one is dwarf, a few centimetres, with solitary flowers under a centimetre; this reaches eighty centimetres and has flowers in racemes. Neither is harmful.
Open sheet →What it is for
No use. It is good at colonising road banks and disturbed ground, and the sticky smell is an effective defence against herbivores: almost nothing eats it.