Plate 1 figs. a–h · 1 observation
This species has been photographed under an open licence only 1 time, 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.
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 24 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Baleares | BAL | EUROPE |
| Corse | COR | |
| France | FRA | |
| Greece | GRC | |
| Italy | ITA | |
| Kriti | KRI | |
| Portugal | POR | |
| Sardegna | SAR | |
| Sicilia | SIC | |
| Spain | SPA | |
| Türkiye-in-Europe | TUE | |
| Cyprus | CYP | ASIA-TEMPERATE |
| East Aegean Is. | EAI | |
| Iraq | IRQ | |
| Lebanon-Syria | LBS | |
| Palestine | PAL | |
| Sinai | SIN | |
| Türkiye | TUR | |
| Algeria | ALG | AFRICA |
| Canary Is. | CNY | |
| Egypt | EGY | |
| Madeira | MDR | |
| Morocco | MOR | |
| Tunisia | TUN |
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 109 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 4.5 °C | 9.5 °C | 11.4 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 21.6 °C | 29.5 °C | 32.8 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 463 mm | 638 mm | 782 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 2 mm | 13 mm | 80 mm |
It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 109 research-grade observations of Medicago ciliaris 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 6 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.
- Medica ciliaris (L.) Medik.
- Medicago ciliaris var. apiculata Urb.
- Medicago echinus subsp. ciliaris (L.) Bonnier
- Medicago intertexta subsp. ciliaris (L.) Ponert
- Medicago intertexta var. ciliaris (L.) Heyn
- Medicago polymorpha var. ciliaris L.
Sourcesevery claim on this page
- World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
- iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
- 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.