Lotus creticusL.

creta trefoil

WFO wfo-0000212182 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lotus creticus, photographed by Quentin Groom
fig. a Quentin Groom, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-07 / obs. 195757193
Lotus creticus, photographed by Davide Puddu
fig. b Davide Puddu, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185709398
Lotus creticus, photographed by Júlio Reis
fig. c Júlio Reis, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 177455141
Lotus creticus, photographed by Duarte Frade
fig. d Duarte Frade, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 177323452
Lotus creticus, photographed by Duarte Frade
fig. e Duarte Frade, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176879935
Lotus creticus, photographed by Duarte Frade
fig. f Duarte Frade, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174677093
Lotus creticus, photographed by Donald Davesne
fig. g Donald Davesne, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174741537
Lotus creticus, photographed by Duarte Frade
fig. h Duarte Frade, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 165163270

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 18 botanical countries

Regions where Lotus creticus is native: Algeria, Canary Is., Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, East Aegean Is., Palestine, Sinai, Corse, France, Greece, Italy, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain AlgeriaEgyptLibyaMoroccoTunisiaEast Aegean Is.PalestineSinaiCorseFranceGreeceItalyNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalSiciliaSpain Canary Is.Sardegna
Native distribution of Lotus creticus, 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. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Corse COR EUROPE
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Canary Is. CNY
Egypt EGY
Libya LBY
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN
East Aegean Is. EAI ASIA-TEMPERATE
Palestine PAL
Sinai SIN

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.

Flowering 324 in flower of 354 examined

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Lotus creticus observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 324 of 354 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 16 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.

  • Lotus argenteus Salisb.
  • Lotus carthaginiensis Andr.
  • Lotus commutatus Guss.
  • Lotus creticus f. grandiflorus Heyn & Herrnst.
  • Lotus creticus subsp. commutatus Arcang.
  • Lotus creticus subsp. commutatus (Guss.) Ball
  • Lotus creticus subsp. commutatus (Guss.) Batt.
  • Lotus creticus subsp. salzmannii (Boiss. & Reut.) H.Lindb.
  • Lotus creticus var. micranthus Maire
  • Lotus cytisoides subsp. conradiae Gamisans
  • Lotus obtusatus Ser.
  • Lotus pseudo-creticus Maire, Weiller & Wilczek
  • Lotus salzmannii Boiss. & Reut.
  • Lotus sericeus Moench
  • Lotus varians Desv.
  • Trifolium creticum (L.) Hoffm.

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. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.