Tree medic

Medicago arborea, the tree medick or moon trefoil, is a small evergreen shrub in the Fabaceae native to rocky coastal habitats of the central and eastern Mediterranean and now widely naturalised in the western Mediterranean and on islands. Plants grow to 1 to 4 metres tall with much-branched, ascending woody stems that are silvery silky-pubescent when young and become greyish brown with age. The alternate, petiolate leaves are trifoliolate with obovate to oblanceolate leaflets 10 to 25 millimetres long, finely silky beneath and notched at the apex with a short bristle in the sinus. Yellow pea-shaped flowers 12 to 15 millimetres long are borne in dense axillary racemes of three to eight flowers and appear over a long season from late winter into autumn. The fruit is the distinctive flat, papery, snail-shell-like spiral pod about 10 to 15 millimetres across, twisted into one to two loose turns and lacking the prickles of many other Medicago species; each pod contains a few brown reniform seeds.