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.
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.
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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