Lotus subbiflorusLag.

hairy bird's-foot trefoil

WFO wfo-0000212251 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Lotus subbiflorus, photographed by Tim Kirsten
fig. a Tim Kirsten, CC0 1.0 / 2022-02-10 / obs. 178903159

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 21 botanical countries

Regions where Lotus subbiflorus is native: Algeria, Azores, Canary Is., Libya, Madeira, Morocco, Tunisia, Palestine, Türkiye, Tasmania, Corse, France, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Kriti, Portugal, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain AlgeriaLibyaMoroccoTunisiaPalestineTürkiyeTasmaniaCorseFranceGreeceIrelandItalyKritiPortugalSiciliaSpain AzoresCanary Is.MadeiraSardegna
Native distribution of Lotus subbiflorus, 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
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Ireland IRE
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Portugal POR
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Azores AZO
Canary Is. CNY
Libya LBY
Madeira MDR
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN
Palestine PAL ASIA-TEMPERATE
Türkiye TUR
Tasmania TAS AUSTRALASIA

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 266 in flower of 271 examined

Proportion of examined Lotus subbiflorus in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 54 55 98% 90% to 100%
Feb 12 12 100% 76% to 100%
Mar 11 11 100% 74% to 100%
Apr 4 4 too few examined
May 5 5 100% 57% to 100%
Jun 1 2 too few examined
Jul 3 4 too few examined
Aug 2 2 too few examined
Sep 2 2 too few examined
Oct 20 21 95% 77% to 99%
Nov 63 64 98% 92% to 100%
Dec 89 89 100% 96% to 100%

Peak flowering in Feb. Each bar is the share of Lotus subbiflorus 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. 266 of 271 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. 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 12 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 angustissimus subsp. suaveolens (Pers.) O.Bolòs & Vigo
  • Lotus angustissimus var. brachycarpus Pau
  • Lotus approximatus Clavaud
  • Lotus divaricatus Sol. ex Buch
  • Lotus filiformis Poir.
  • Lotus hispidus subsp. stagnalis Batt.
  • Lotus hispidus var. stagnalis (Batt.) Maire
  • Lotus hispidus var. subbiflorus (Lag.) Merino
  • Lotus odoratus Sims
  • Lotus pilosissimus Poir.
  • Lotus suaveolens Pers.
  • Lotus unibracteatus Viv.

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.