Melilotus officinalis(L.) Lam.

Yellow Sweetclover

WFO wfo-0001055378 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Melilotus officinalis, photographed by Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky)
fig. a Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky), CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205701241
Melilotus officinalis, photographed by Violet T.
fig. b Violet T., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205848581
Melilotus officinalis, photographed by Kirill Levchenko
fig. c Kirill Levchenko, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205477269
Melilotus officinalis, photographed by jfox16
fig. d jfox16, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205652875
Melilotus officinalis, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. e Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205683888
Melilotus officinalis, photographed by Michal Honskus
fig. f Michal Honskus, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204932342
Melilotus officinalis, photographed by Nash Turley
fig. g Nash Turley, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205196243
Melilotus officinalis, photographed by voronokin1971
fig. h voronokin1971, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204855772

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.

Flowering n = 4,799 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 4,799 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 54 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.

  • Brachylobus officinalis (L.) Dulac
  • Medicago officinalis (L.) E.H.L.Krause
  • Melilotus armenus Boiss.
  • Melilotus arvensis Wallr.
  • Melilotus arvensis prol. luxurians Rouy
  • Melilotus arvensis prol. maximus (Legrand) Rouy
  • Melilotus arvensis var. albus St.-Lag.
  • Melilotus arvensis var. grandiflorus Lamotte
  • Melilotus arvensis var. maximus (Legrand) St.-Lag.
  • Melilotus bungeanus Boiss.
  • Melilotus citrinus Duval ex Steud.
  • Melilotus diffusus W.D.J.Koch ex DC.
  • Melilotus expansus Rchb.
  • Melilotus flavus Pall.
  • Melilotus kochianus DC.
  • Melilotus longepedicellatus Rosbach
  • Melilotus lutescens Gilib.
  • Melilotus luteus Gueldenst.
  • Melilotus luxurians Shuttlew. ex Rouy & Foucaud
  • Melilotus macrorhizus Besser
  • Melilotus macrorrhizus var. palustris (Waldst. & Kit.) W.D.J.Koch
  • Melilotus macrospermus K.Koch ex Boiss.
  • Melilotus mauritanicus Willd.
  • Melilotus maximus Legrand

and 30 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.