Melilotus neapolitanusTen. ex Guss.

WFO wfo-0000185391 Accepted WFO 2026-06 5 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–e · 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.

Melilotus neapolitanus, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. a Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-05-07 / obs. 127958734
Melilotus neapolitanus, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. b Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 127958677
Melilotus neapolitanus, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. c Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 127958634
Melilotus neapolitanus, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. d Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 127958756
Melilotus neapolitanus, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. e Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 127958777

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
02235904
Filed as
Melilotus neapolitanus Ten.
Det. by
N. Lachashvili
Collected
N. Lachashvili 2006-05-17
Origin
GE
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. We link to the digitised sheet rather than rehosting it, because the holding institutions do not serve their images to third parties reliably and we are not going to show you a picture we cannot actually deliver. 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 sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 21 botanical countries

Regions where Melilotus neapolitanus is native: Algeria, Tunisia, East Aegean Is., North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Baleares, Bulgaria, Corse, France, Greece, Italy, Kriti, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Portugal, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaTunisiaEast Aegean Is.North CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaBulgariaCorseFranceGreeceItalyKritiKrymNW. Balkan Pen.PortugalSiciliaSpainTürkiye-in-Europe BalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Melilotus neapolitanus, 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
Baleares BAL
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Portugal POR
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
East Aegean Is. EAI ASIA-TEMPERATE
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
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 124 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -3.4 °C -0.1 °C 10.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.3 °C 26.1 °C 31.5 °C
Annual rainfall 460 mm 804 mm 1,052 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 3 mm 138 mm 183 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 124 research-grade observations of Melilotus neapolitanus 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 17 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.

  • Medicago gracilis (DC.) E.H.L.Krause
  • Melilotus besserianus Ser.
  • Melilotus glaucescens Godr. ex Trautv.
  • Melilotus globosus Steven
  • Melilotus globulosus Steven
  • Melilotus gracilis DC.
  • Melilotus heterophyllus Scheele
  • Melilotus imbricatus Besser ex Ser.
  • Melilotus intricatus Nyman
  • Melilotus microcarpus C.A.Mey. ex Boiss.
  • Melilotus neapolitana Ten.
  • Melilotus neapolitanus var. microcarpus Rouy
  • Melilotus spicatus (Sm.) Breistr.
  • Sertula besseriana (Ser.) Kuntze
  • Sertula neapolitana (Ten.) Kuntze
  • Trifolium spicatum Sm.
  • Trigonella wojciechowskii Coulot & Rabaute

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. 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.