Medicago scutellata(L.) Mill.

snail medick

WFO wfo-0000213473 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 6 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 6 times, 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.

Medicago scutellata, photographed by Tim Johnson
fig. a Tim Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-03-27 / obs. 185027818
Medicago scutellata, photographed by Tim Johnson
fig. b Tim Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185027757
Medicago scutellata, photographed by Ronald Flipphi
fig. c Ronald Flipphi, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 37937594
Medicago scutellata, photographed by Tim Johnson
fig. d Tim Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 182189468
Medicago scutellata, photographed by Tim Johnson
fig. e Tim Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185027771
Medicago scutellata, photographed by Tim Johnson
fig. f Tim Johnson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185027739
Medicago scutellata, photographed by hecklemore
fig. g hecklemore, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191041690
Medicago scutellata, photographed by Yves Bas
fig. h Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 74712662

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
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
02615541
Filed as
Medicago scutellata (L.) Mill.
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
G. V. Nash 1898-07-14
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

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 22 botanical countries

Regions where Medicago scutellata is native: Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Lebanon-Syria, Palestine, Türkiye, Baleares, Corse, France, Greece, Italy, Kriti, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Ukraine AlgeriaLibyaMoroccoTunisiaCyprusEast Aegean Is.Lebanon-SyriaPalestineTürkiyeCorseFranceGreeceItalyKritiKrymNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalSiciliaSpainUkraine BalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Medicago scutellata, 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
Baleares BAL EUROPE
Corse COR
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Ukraine UKR
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Lebanon-Syria LBS
Palestine PAL
Türkiye TUR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Libya LBY
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 146 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 2.0 °C 6.1 °C 10.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.9 °C 28.6 °C 34.3 °C
Annual rainfall 466 mm 679 mm 832 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 3 mm 47 mm 112 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 146 research-grade observations of Medicago scutellata 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.

  • Cochleata scutellata (L.) Medik.
  • Medica scutellata (L.) Bubani
  • Medicago inermis Lam. ex Steud.
  • Medicago polymorpha var. scutellata L.
  • Medicago scutellaris Rchb.
  • Pocockia scutellata (L.) Trautv.

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.