Lotus maritimus
species of plant
Lotus maritimus is a species of plant in the legume family, native to Europe, Africa and temperate Asia. It is one of several species known as dragon's teeth.
Description
Dragon's-teeth is a prostrate or debumbent (curving up at the tips), herbaceous perennial with branched stems up to about 30 cm long. The leaves are alternate and consist of three leaflets at the end of a short stalk (petiole) about 0.5 cm long. The leaflets are sessile, 10-30 mm long by 4-15 mm wide, oblanceolate, and finely hairy. At the base of the petiole there are two ovate stipules about 10 mm long.
Flowering takes place in spring and summer (May - August in Britain). The inflorescences arise from the leaf axils and have just one or two flowers on a peduncle that is considerably longer than the adjacent leaf. Each flower is subtended by a 3-lobed bract with narrow, pointed lobes. The flower consists of a reddish-green, hairy calyx up to 15 mm long which splits about halfway along into 5 unequal, pointed teeth.
The public source identifies “Lotus maritimus” as species of plant. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lotus, maritimus and species.
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Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q159170. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lotus maritimus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.