Dried plants. Edinburgh Botanic Gardens. Collected Israel (1942)

Painting in J H Jaume Saint-Hilaire (1830) La Flore et la Pomone Francaises Wikimedia

Common Name

Sand Medic

Family

Fabaceae

Notes

Introduced prostrate annual forb, stems to 40cm or more long. Leaves alternating along the stems, compound, composed of three leaflets, each 0.8-1.7cm long, 5-16mm wide, toothed toward the tips, upper surface hairless to sparsely hairy, lower surface hairy, with rounded tips, sometimes notched. Flowers yellow, pea-shaped, with five petals, two almost joined together.  Flowers in racemes of 4-15 flowers, the stalks arising from the bases of the leaves. Medicago italica in NSW and SA.

Description (as Medicago tornata var. tornata) (page 404) and line drawing of pod (Fig. 51h page 403) in G.M. Cunningham, WE Mulham, PL Milthorpe and J H Leigh (1981 and later printings) Plants of Western New South Wales

PlantNET description (as Medicago italica):  http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Medicago~italica