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L O T U S major.
Greater Bird’s-foot Trefoil.
DIADELPIIIA Decandria.
G e n . C h a r . Legume cy lin d ric a l, stra ig h t. Wings o f
th e corolla c o h e rin g b y th e ir u p p e r ed g e . Calyx
tu b u la r . Filaments d ila ted u pw a rd s.
S p e c . C h a r . Heads depressed, many-flowered. Stems
erect, hollow. Legumes spreading, cylindrical.
Claw of the keel linear. Shorter filaments not dilated.
Syn. Lotus major. Scop. Cam. v. 2 . 86.
L. cornicukkus y and £. Sm. FI. Brit. 794.
L. corniculatse major species. Raii Syn. 334. Bauh.
Hist. v. 2. 355,.
L. pentaphyllus medius pilosus. Dill, in Raii Syn. 334.
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X HIS, which Scopoli long ago distinguished as a species,
we are induced, by many recent observations, to admit as
such. It is common among bushes on a wet spongy soil, in
osier-grounds and moist hedges. The stems are from one
to two or three feet high, upright, hollow, more or less
clothed with long loosely-spreading hairs. Leaves also fringed
with similar hairs. Flowers from 6 to 12 in each head, of a
duller orange than the former. Calyx-teetji stellated when
young, hairy 3 the spaces between them, as the ReV^Dr. Beeke
observes, are narrow and acute, not rounded. Claw of the
keel almost linear, by no means rounded or expanded. Shorter
filaments not dilated under the anther like the longer ones, a
character pointed out by Scopoli. Pod slender, and exactly
cylindrical. All these differences are surely sufficient, and
indeed the plant is, at first sight, so different from the common
L . corniculatus, that nothing can be more readily recognized.