Bird's-foot - Ornithopus perpusillus
Tiny, low, prostrate, hairy plant. Leaflets 7 to 13 pairs, elliptical to oblong. Flowers white or pink, 3 to 5 mm, in heads of 3 to 8. Bracts with 5 to 9 leaflets, longer than the flowers.
A very small plant, with many pairs of leaflets
A photo of the whole plant, showing leaves as well as flowers
Open patches of short turf, waste and arable ground, generally on rather dry, acid or gravelly soil.
May to August.
Annual.
Widespread in England and Wales, scarcer elsewhere in Britain.
Near scarce n Leicestershire and Rutland. In the Flora of Leicestershire (Primavesi and Evans 1988) it was found in 14 of the 617 tetrads.
In the VC55 checklist, (Jeeves, 2011) it is listed as Native; heath-grassland; scarce.
It was on the 2011 VC55 Rare Plant Register (Jeeves, 2011) but does not meet the criteria for the current RPR (Hall and Woodward, 2022)
Graham Calow
Croft Pasture
09 May 2014
David Nicholls
Croft Pasture
09 May 2014
David Nicholls
Croft Pasture
09 May 2014
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Species profile
- Common names
- Bird's-foot, Common Birdsfoot
- Species group:
- Wildflowers
- Kingdom:
- Plantae
- Order:
- Fabales
- Family:
- Fabaceae
- Records on NatureSpot:
- 14
- First record:
- 09/05/2014 (Calow, Graham)
- Last record:
- 15/05/2023 (Cunningham, Sally)
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% of records within its species group
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Graham Calow
Croft Pasture
09 May 2014
David Nicholls
Croft Pasture
09 May 2014
