Anagyris foetida L.
Eng.: Bean-clover, stinking wood, purging trefoil, stinking bean trefoil. Spa.: Hediondo, altramuz del diablo, hediondo. Fre.: Bois puant, anagyre fetide. Ara.: Garood, kherua, bequl el kelb, kherub el maïz, kherub turehane, kherub el khenzir, habb el kela. Tam.: Inuthun, lanebut, afnen, ufni, uifane, uffe, nine, entarhat, torhill, asr’ar uijjan, aldhaz.
Shrub or small tree up to 3(4) m in height, unarmed, hermaphrodite, deciduous, with extended-erect branches, fetid. Stems and older branches with a brownish, little or not at all fissured bark. Young branchlets greenish or reddish-brown, without ribs, sericeous at first, turning glabrescent. Leaves alternate, trifoliolate with petiole 5-20 mm, sericeous, and leaflets 3-7.5 × 1-2.5 cm, subsessile, elliptical, oblong-elliptical or oblong-obovate, acute, attenuated at the base, entire, somewhat discoloured, glabrous and matt green on the upper side, and lighter and sericeous on the underside; the central leaflet larger. Inflorescences racemose, very short, axillary, with 3-8 pedicellate flowers, with pedicel 5-10 mm, sericeous, without bracteoles. Calyx 8-10 mm, herbaceous, campanulate, bilabiate, with 5 teeth, the two upper teeth fused into a bidentate lip, green, sericeous, persistent at Fruiting. Corolla 18-28 mm, papilionoid, predominantly yellow, with standard ovate, obtuse, with green or brown-purple macules about halfway, glabrous, shorter wings and keel longer than the standard. Androecium with 10 free stamens. Ovary sericeous. Pod 6-15(20) × 1.5-2.5 cm, pendulous, linear or narrowly elliptical, compressed, green or greenish-yellowish at first, turning blackish, glabrous, with (1)2-6(8) seeds very prominent. Seeds 7.5-15 mm, kidney-shaped, purplish, sometimes with yellow spots.
Flowering:
November to May.
Fruiting:
June to September.
Habitat:
Forests and thickets on various types of terrain, in semiarid (in this case, always in shady areas or edges of waterways) to subhumid bioclimatic zones, on inframediterranean to mesomediterranean floors.
Distribution:
Mediterranean region. In North Africa it is not very common, but is widely distributed across the Mediterranean regions of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya (Cyrenaica) and Egypt (Nile Delta and the Sinai Peninsula), reaching towards the S up to the Anti-Atlas.
Observations:
Its flowers produce abundant amounts of nectar and are pollinated by birds. It is used in medicine for its high content of some alkaloids (e.g. anagyrine and cytisine), which also makes it highly toxic.
Conservation status:
Rare but widely distributed species, not considered threatened. In the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, it is listed as Least Concern (LC) at global level. In the Red List of vascular plants of Egypt (Flora Aegyptiaca Vol 1, 2000) it is listed as “Extinct”.