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Meadow Bird's Foot Trefoil
Hosackia pinnata
Hosackia pinnata, synonym Lotus pinnatus, is a species of legume native to western North America from British Columbia to California. It is known by the common names meadow bird's-foot trefoil and bog bird's-foot trefoil. Its distribution extends into British Columbia in just a few rare occurrences near Nanaimo. It grows in moist to wet habitat, such as bogs and spring meadows. It is a hairless perennial herb lined with leaves each made up of green oval leaflets each 1 to 2.5 centimeters in length. The inflorescence is an array of up to 10 pealike flowers between 1 and 2 centimeters long. Each flower has a bright yellow banner, or upper petal, and white lower petals. The fruit is a slender, elongated legume pod up to 5 centimeters long but just a few millimeters wide.
A park in the city of Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada, is named after it, using its superseded synonym: Lotus Pinnatus Park.
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Hosackia pinnata in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 77457.