Medicago lupulinaL.

Black Medick

WFO wfo-0000213454 Accepted WFO 2026-06 6 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–f

Medicago lupulina, photographed by Zeke Marshall
fig. a Zeke Marshall, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205817077
Medicago lupulina, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. b Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205540139
Medicago lupulina, photographed by bulatik
fig. c bulatik, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205741897
Medicago lupulina, photographed by Randy A Nonenmacher
fig. d Randy A Nonenmacher, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205572619
Medicago lupulina, photographed by Antony Coombs
fig. e Antony Coombs, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205419000
Medicago lupulina, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. f Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205846545

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 7,455 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 7,455 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 62 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.

  • Lupularia parviflora Opiz
  • Lupulina aurata Noulet
  • Medica lupulina (L.) Scop.
  • Medicago apennina J.Woods
  • Medicago appenina Woods
  • Medicago breviflora Gilib.
  • Medicago canescens Menyh.
  • Medicago ciliaris Lucé
  • Medicago corymbifera W.L.E.Schmidt ex Schltdl.
  • Medicago cupaniana var. leiocarpa
  • Medicago cupianiana Guss.
  • Medicago eriocarpa Rouy
  • Medicago lupulina f. canescens (Menyh.) Soó
  • Medicago lupulina f. corymbosa (Ser.) Urb.
  • Medicago lupulina f. leiocarpa Urb.
  • Medicago lupulina f. polystachya (Ser.) Urb.
  • Medicago lupulina f. stipularis (Wallr.) Urb.
  • Medicago lupulina f. subglabra Pau
  • Medicago lupulina f. unguiculata (Ser.) Urb.
  • Medicago lupulina f. willdenowiana (W.D.J.Koch) Urb.
  • Medicago lupulina prol. cupianiana (Guss.) Rouy
  • Medicago lupulina subsp. cupaniana (Guss.) Nyman
  • Medicago lupulina subsp. cupianiana (Guss.) Nyman
  • Medicago lupulina subsp. eurasiatica Braun-Blanq.

and 38 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.

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