Medicago minima
Medicago minima
Gurnik
Annual, 10-25 cm, covered with simple hairs, with glandular hairs or with both. Stipules entire or minutely toothed. Leaflets 5-8 x 2-7 mm, shortly obovate, rarely oblanceolate, retuse to emarginate, with a small terminal tooth. Peduncles with 3-6 crowded flowers, usually longer than petiole. Flowers 2-4 mm. Calyx teeth unequal, about as long as tube. Corolla less than twice as long as calyx. Young fruit protruding sideways from the calyx. Fruit pubescent or glabrescent, discoid or cylindrical to ovoid, 3-5 mm high, spiny; coils 3-5, loose, thin, pergamentaceous, 2.5-4.5 mm diam., last coil of pod smaller than first; surface of coils with 6-8 strongly curved unbranched radial veins running into a veinless submarginal border; spines varying from short tubercles to long, hooked spines, twice as long as the diam. of fruit, grooved nearly to tip; insertion of spines slightly removed from the marginal border, at 180º on middle coil and at c. 130° on the first and last coils. Fl. 3-5. Rocky limestone slopes, steppe, sand dunes, fields, etc. s.l.-1750 m.
1. Fruit discoid; spines hooked, longer than half the radius of the coils var. minima
1. Fruit ovoid; spines usually straight, less than half as long as the radius of the coils var. brevispina
Distribution of species: Europe, Asia, N. Africa, Macaronesia & the Cape; adventive in America.
1. Fruit discoid; spines hooked, longer than half the radius of the coils var. minima
1. Fruit ovoid; spines usually straight, less than half as long as the radius of the coils var. brevispina
Distribution of species: Europe, Asia, N. Africa, Macaronesia & the Cape; adventive in America.
