General: Annual or sometimes short-lived perennial herb; stems prostrate to erect, 10-50 cm long, branched from the base, downy.
Leaves: Alternate, pinnately compound; leaflets 3, egg-shaped with a wedge-shaped base, 0.5-2 cm long, not spotted, hairy to glabrous, the upper margins toothed; stipules entire to shallowly toothed, lanceolate, not sheathing, 3-6 mm long.
Flowers: Inflorescence a compact, spike-like, axillary raceme of 10 to 40 pea-like flowers, the racemes to 1 cm long on stalks equalling or longer than the leaves; corollas yellow, 2-3 mm long; calyces bell-shaped, about 1 mm long.
Fruits: Pods, kidney-shaped, coiled through about one spiral, 2-3 mm long, unarmed, net-ridged, glabrous or short-hairy, becoming black; seeds 1.
Mesic to dry fields, roadsides and waste places; common in BC S of 56degreeN, rare on the Queen Charlotte Islands, absent on N Vancouver Island; 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)
