General: Perennial herb from a rhizome; stems numerous, prostrate to trailing and often rooting at the nodes, to 60 cm long, glabrous to soft-hairy.
Leaves: Alternate, pinnately compound; leaflets 5, the lowest pair basal, somewhat stipule-like, short-stalked, nearly equal in size and shape to the 3 terminal leaflets, which are elliptic to egg-shaped, 5-15 mm long, usually minutely toothed and fringed with soft hairs; leaf axis 2-5 mm long, flattened; stipules tiny, gland-like.
Flowers: Inflorescence a compact, stalked, axillary umbel of 2 to 8 pea-like flowers, the umbel-stalks stout, to 8 cm long; corollas yellow, often tinged with red, 8-15 mm long; calyces 1/3-1/2 as long as the corollas, hairy or glabrous, the linear to lanceolate teeth shorter than to as long as the tube.
Fruits: Pods, narrowly oblong, 2-4 cm long; seeds 10 to 25, brownish-black, 1.5 mm long.
Moist to dry roadsides, waste places, pastures and lawns in the lowland, steppe and montane zones; infrequent but increasing in S BC; introduced from Eurasia.
The table below shows the species-specific information calculated from original data (BEC database) provided by the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. (Updated August, 2013)
