Bladder-senna - Colutea arborescens

A much branched shrub from 2 to 4 metres in height. Leaves are pinnate with 4 or 5 pairs of oval leaflets. Flowers yellow, pea like, sometimes marked with red. 16 to 20 mm long in short lateral racemes. Pods very inflated bladders, 5 to 7 cm, brown and papery when ripe.

Dry slopes, roadside and railway banks and verges.

It is in flower from June to August, and the seeds ripen from September to October.

Deciduous shrub. The leaves and seeds have purgative properties.

Scattered localities mainly in the south of Britain.

Rare in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 4 of the 617 tetrads.