Arabian pea
Bituminaria bituminosa
Family · Fabaceae · Harmless
The legume with lilac flowers in a head that smells of tar when rubbed, and no other Iberian plant smells like that. Once smelled, never confused again.
Roadsides and waste ground · Fields and pasture · Scrubland · Walls and rocks
Also known aspitch trefoil, tar clover
How to tell it
Three narrow, elongated leaflets on a long stalk. A head of bluish lilac flowers atop an upright stem. The tar or bitumen smell when a leaf is crushed is the definitive mark and never fails in any season.
What it is confused with
Red clover
Trifolium pratense
From a distance the heads look similar. Rub a leaf: only one of them smells of tar. And the tar clover's leaflets are far narrower and longer.
Open sheet →What it is for
Fodder in dry zones, especially in the Canaries, and a folk medicine plant for external use. The smell keeps insects away, which is why it was put among clothes.
With documented traditional uses. Not a therapeutic indication and not a dose.