Bur medick
Medicago minima
Family · Fabaceae · Harmless
The tiny hairy legume that makes spiral fruits covered in hooks, responsible for half the burrs picked up on your socks on a summer path.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Uplands · Town and roadside
Also known aslittle bur-clover, small medick
How to tell it
A small prostrate plant, hairy white all over, which sets it apart from other medicks. Three-lobed leaves with a notched tip. Tiny yellow flowers in groups of two to five. Fruit coiled in a tight spiral, with hooked curved spines.
What it is confused with
Burclover
Medicago polymorpha
Both make hooked spirals. The small one is hairy all over with greyish leaves; burclover is nearly hairless and bright green, and much larger. Neither is harmful.
Open sheet →What it is for
Dry pasture forage, no direct use for a walker. Worth recognising for the opposite reason: it is the plant not to sit on in woollen clothes.