Yellow serradella
Ornithopus compressus
Family · Fabaceae · Harmless
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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.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Pine woods · Dunes and sand
Also known asbird's-foot, yellow birdsfoot
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.
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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