Lotus pedunculatusCav.

Greater Bird's-foot-trefoilgreater birdsfoot-trefoilbig trefoil

WFO wfo-0000212230 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lotus pedunculatus, photographed by Thomas Koffel
fig. a Thomas Koffel, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-27 / obs. 200958309
Lotus pedunculatus, photographed by Thomas Koffel
fig. b Thomas Koffel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200958133
Lotus pedunculatus, photographed by Jeff Jones
fig. c Jeff Jones, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200762449
Lotus pedunculatus, photographed by Kelvin Perrie
fig. d Kelvin Perrie, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191995241
Lotus pedunculatus, photographed by Alice Shanks
fig. e Alice Shanks, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190767400
Lotus pedunculatus, photographed by Jenny Saito
fig. f Jenny Saito, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187222041
Lotus pedunculatus, photographed by Jenny Saito
fig. g Jenny Saito, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185018806
Lotus pedunculatus, photographed by Saryu Mae 前 朝琉
fig. h Saryu Mae 前 朝琉, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 184765269

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 3746035
Filed as
Lotus pedunculatus subsp. pedunculatus
Det. by
Wagner, W. L., (BOT), Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History (UNITED STATES)
Collected
H. L. Oppenheimer 2018-06-14
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 34 botanical countries

Regions where Lotus pedunculatus is native: Algeria, Azores, Canary Is., Egypt, Libya, Madeira, Morocco, Tunisia, Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Kriti, Netherlands, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sardegna, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine AlgeriaEgyptLibyaMoroccoTunisiaTürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumCorseCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkFranceGermanyGreeceIrelandItalyKritiNetherlandsNW. Balkan Pen.PolandPortugalRomaniaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine AzoresCanary Is.MadeiraSardegna
Native distribution of Lotus pedunculatus, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Netherlands NET
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Azores AZO
Canary Is. CNY
Egypt EGY
Libya LBY
Madeira MDR
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN
Türkiye TUR ASIA-TEMPERATE

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 1,535 in flower of 1,642 examined

Peak flowering in Dec. Each bar is the share of Lotus pedunculatus 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. 1,535 of 1,642 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.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,979 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -2.6 °C 2.0 °C 8.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 16.7 °C 21.1 °C 28.0 °C
Annual rainfall 664 mm 1,178 mm 2,757 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 72 mm 170 mm 359 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 1,979 research-grade observations of Lotus pedunculatus 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 50 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 cantabricus Sennen
  • Lotus corniculatus f. hirsutus Wallr.
  • Lotus corniculatus prol. decumbens (Poir.) Rouy
  • Lotus corniculatus prol. pedunculatus (Cav.) Rouy
  • Lotus corniculatus subsp. decumbens (Poir.) Merino
  • Lotus corniculatus subsp. hirsutus (Wallr.) Schübl. & G.Martens
  • Lotus corniculatus subsp. major (Scop.) Ehrh.
  • Lotus corniculatus subsp. uliginosus (Schkuhr) Briq.
  • Lotus corniculatus subsp. valdepilosus (Schur) Kerguélen
  • Lotus corniculatus var. carnosus Wahlb.
  • Lotus corniculatus var. decumbens (Poir.) Bolzon
  • Lotus corniculatus var. hirsutus Hartm.
  • Lotus corniculatus var. major (Scop.) Ser.
  • Lotus corniculatus var. palustris Fr.
  • Lotus corniculatus var. pedunculatus (Cav.) Willk.
  • Lotus corniculatus var. uliginosus (Schkuhr) Wahlenb.
  • Lotus corniculatus var. uliginosus (Schkuhr) Hartm.
  • Lotus corniculatus var. uliginosus (Schkuhr) Wallr.
  • Lotus corniculatus var. villosus St.-Lag.
  • Lotus corniculatus var. villosus Mérat
  • Lotus decumbens Poir.
  • Lotus granadensis Zertova
  • Lotus granadensis Chrtková
  • Lotus major Sm.

and 26 more.

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.