Astragalus sesameusL.

WFO wfo-0000212562 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–g · 3 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 3 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Astragalus sesameus, photographed by Tim Johnson
fig. a Tim Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-30 / obs. 185535115

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 15 botanical countries

Regions where Astragalus sesameus is native: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, East Aegean Is., Lebanon-Syria, Türkiye, Albania, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Sicilia, Spain AlgeriaMoroccoTunisiaEast Aegean Is.Lebanon-SyriaTürkiyeAlbaniaBulgariaFranceGreeceItalyNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalSiciliaSpain
Native distribution of Astragalus sesameus, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Bulgaria BUL
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN
East Aegean Is. EAI ASIA-TEMPERATE
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Türkiye TUR

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 123 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -0.7 °C 3.4 °C 11.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.2 °C 27.8 °C 32.4 °C
Annual rainfall 272 mm 582 mm 1,074 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 11 mm 82 mm 145 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 123 research-grade observations of Astragalus sesameus that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 10 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Astragalus annuus DC.
  • Astragalus malacensis Salzm. ex Bunge
  • Astragalus mediterraneus Bubani
  • Astragalus saguntinus Pau
  • Astragalus sesameus var. anoectotrichus Faure & Maire
  • Astragalus sesameus var. brachycarpus Moris
  • Astragalus sesameus var. faurei Maire
  • Astragalus sesameus var. substellaris Maire
  • Stella sesamea (L.) Medik.
  • Tragacantha sesamea (L.) Kuntze

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.