Alyce-clover

Alysicarpus vaginalis, commonly called alyce-clover or one-leaf clover, is an annual or short-lived perennial herb in the Fabaceae family. The stems are slender and either grow erect or trail along the ground, typically reaching about one metre in length and branching freely from the base. Leaves are simple and undivided rather than compound as in most legumes, variable in shape from oblong to elliptic, and up to 6.5 cm long. Small pea-like flowers are borne in terminal racemes of up to a dozen blooms, with corollas about 5 mm long in shades of red, purple, blue, or yellow. The fruit is a lightly hairy, cylindrical but compressed legume pod up to 2.5 cm long, breaking transversely into single-seeded segments that contain dark reddish kidney-shaped seeds. The species is widely cultivated in tropical and warm temperate regions as a pasture legume and cover crop.