Trigonella esculentaWilld.

WFO wfo-0000212940 Accepted WFO 2026-06 6 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–f · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 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.

Trigonella esculenta, photographed by Denis Bastianelli
fig. a Denis Bastianelli, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-05-12 / obs. 112772497
Trigonella esculenta, photographed by Valentina Caviglia
fig. b Valentina Caviglia, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 18725097
Trigonella esculenta, photographed by Denis Bastianelli
fig. c Denis Bastianelli, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112772494
Trigonella esculenta, photographed by Valentina Caviglia
fig. d Valentina Caviglia, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 18737206
Trigonella esculenta, photographed by Denis Bastianelli
fig. e Denis Bastianelli, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112772383
Trigonella esculenta, photographed by Denis Bastianelli
fig. f Denis Bastianelli, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112772493

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.

Native range 15 botanical countries

Regions where Trigonella esculenta is native: East Aegean Is., Lebanon-Syria, East Himalaya, India, Nepal, Pakistan, West Himalaya, Albania, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy, NW. Balkan Pen., Sicilia, Spain East Aegean Is.Lebanon-SyriaEast HimalayaIndiaNepalPakistanWest HimalayaAlbaniaBulgariaFranceGreeceItalyNW. Balkan Pen.SiciliaSpain
Native distribution of Trigonella esculenta, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Bulgaria BUL
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
East Himalaya EHM ASIA-TROPICAL
India IND
Nepal NEP
Pakistan PAK
West Himalaya WHM
East Aegean Is. EAI ASIA-TEMPERATE
Lebanon-Syria LBS

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 106 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -1.3 °C 3.8 °C 8.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 24.6 °C 27.2 °C 30.9 °C
Annual rainfall 656 mm 986 mm 1,786 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 55 mm 133 mm 288 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 106 research-grade observations of Trigonella esculenta 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 9 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.

  • Buceras grandiflora Moench
  • Medicago esculenta Rottler ex Willd.
  • Trigonella corniculata prol. elatior Rouy
  • Trigonella corniculata subsp. elatior Asch. & Graebn.
  • Trigonella corniculata subsp. occidentalis Greuter
  • Trigonella corniculata var. elatior (Sm.) P.Fourn.
  • Trigonella corniculata var. major Rouy
  • Trigonella corniculata var. stenophylla Rouy
  • Trigonella elatior Sm.

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.