Black medick
Medicago lupulina
Family · Fabaceae · Harmless
The medick that fools everyone because it looks like a yellow clover: round heads of tiny flowers that darken to black as the fruit ripens, hence the name.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Town and roadside · Uplands
Also known ashop clover, nonesuch
How to tell it
Dense round heads of ten to fifty tiny yellow flowers, on their own stalk. Three-lobed leaves with the middle leaflet on a longer stalklet, which separates it from true clovers. The fruits are one-seeded pods, kidney-coiled and black when ripe.
What it is confused with
Hop trefoil
Trifolium campestre
They are nearly identical and grow side by side. On hop trefoil the flowers dry brown and turn downwards like a hop cone; on black medick the fruit turns black and coiled. Neither is harmful.
What it is for
Forage and a honey plant, no use for a walker. It is useful as a field lesson: it shows the difference between clover and medick, which is the stalked middle leaflet and the coiled rather than straight pod.
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
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