Yellow milk-vetch

Astragalus hamosus, the European milkvetch or hooked milkvetch, is a slender prostrate or ascending annual herb of the family Fabaceae growing 10-50 cm long and native from the Mediterranean basin across the Middle East and Iran to Central Asia and northern India. The plant has soft pubescent stems that spread or trail from a slender taproot and bear alternate pinnately compound leaves 4-10 cm long with 6-15 pairs of oblong to obovate leaflets, each 5-15 mm long and rounded or notched at the tip, lightly hairy on both surfaces. From spring to early summer the plant produces small axillary racemes on short peduncles bearing 4-10 pale yellow or whitish pea-flowers 6-9 mm long. The most distinctive feature is the fruit: a slender, cylindrical, smooth or slightly downy legume 2-5 cm long that is strongly curved into a sickle shape or coiled into an almost complete circle, resembling a hook or pruning knife, splitting into two valves at maturity to release several small kidney-shaped seeds. It grows on dry stony slopes, fallow fields, roadsides, and disturbed calcareous ground at low to moderate elevations and is also cultivated as a fodder and green-manure crop.