Trifolium echinatumM.Bieb.

prickly clover

WFO wfo-0000212996 Accepted WFO 2026-06 3 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–c · 3 separate observations

Trifolium echinatum, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. a Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-04-27 / obs. 123470138

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
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000999792
Filed as
Trifolium echinatum M.Bieb.
Det. by
Hossain, M.
Collected
Sintenis, P.E.E. 1888-01-01
Origin
not recorded
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 19 botanical countries

Regions where Trifolium echinatum is native: Libya, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Iran, Iraq, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Palestine, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Romania, Sicilia, Türkiye-in-Europe LibyaCyprusEast Aegean Is.IranIraqLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusPalestineTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaBulgariaGreeceItalyKrymNW. Balkan Pen.RomaniaSiciliaTürkiye-in-Europe
Native distribution of Trifolium echinatum, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Palestine PAL
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Albania ALB EUROPE
Bulgaria BUL
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Romania ROM
Sicilia SIC
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Libya LBY AFRICA

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 61 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -2.9 °C 0.4 °C 6.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.8 °C 28.0 °C 32.6 °C
Annual rainfall 496 mm 829 mm 1,217 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 26 mm 144 mm 189 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 61 research-grade observations of Trifolium echinatum 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 18 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.

  • Trifolium carmeli Boiss.
  • Trifolium carmelii var. serrulatum M.Hossain
  • Trifolium constantinopolitanum var. carmelii (Boiss.) Thell.
  • Trifolium echinatum f. minor Kožuharov
  • Trifolium echinatum subsp. carmelii (Boiss.) Ponert
  • Trifolium echinatum subsp. serrulatum (M.Hossain) Ponert
  • Trifolium echinatum subsp. supinum Asch. & Graebn.
  • Trifolium echinatum var. brevidens Thell.
  • Trifolium echinatum var. procerum (Rochel) Asch. & Graebn.
  • Trifolium echinatum var. reclinatum Asch. & Graebn.
  • Trifolium echinatum var. trichostomum Thell.
  • Trifolium procerum Rochel
  • Trifolium reclinatum Waldst. & Kit.
  • Trifolium reflexum Ser.
  • Trifolium sefinense Freyn & Bornm.
  • Trifolium supinum Savi
  • Trifolium trichostomum Godr.
  • Trifolium waldsteinianum Sweet

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.