Yellow serradella

Ornithopus compressus

Family · Fabaceae · Harmless

The legume whose pods gather in a fan, curved and constricted between the seeds, exactly like the claws of a bird's foot. The name describes the fruit better than any key.

Where it grows

Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Pine woods · Dunes and sand

Also known as

bird's-foot, yellow birdsfoot

In flower

How to tell it

A prostrate hairy plant with leaves of many small paired leaflets. Yellow flowers in groups of two to five, with a leaf right beneath the inflorescence. The pods spread in a fan, curved and knotted between each seed.

What it is confused with

No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.

What it is for

Forage for poor acid soils, grown deliberately to improve pastures in Portugal and Australia. It is good news in a field: it means the soil is gaining nitrogen.

Sources

Flora-On