Stinking bean trefoil

Anagyris foetida, the stinking bean trefoil, is a deciduous shrub or small tree of the Fabaceae native to the Mediterranean basin from Iberia and Morocco through the Levant. It reaches 1–4 m with grey, smooth bark and ascending, brittle branches that emit a fetid odour when bruised. Leaves are alternate, trifoliolate, long-petiolate; leaflets are oblong-lanceolate, 3–8 cm long, soft-pubescent and grey-green, the terminal leaflet equal to the laterals. Inflorescences are short, axillary, leaf-opposed racemes of 3–12 papilionaceous flowers 2–3 cm long; the corolla is bright yellow with a dark blackish-purple blotch on the upper standard, the keel as long as the wings. The fruit is a flattened, glabrous, somewhat torulose pod 10–20 cm long containing 2–8 kidney-shaped, yellow to reddish-brown seeds. The plant flowers from late autumn to early spring (December–April), pollinated by passerine birds—a rare Mediterranean example of ornithophily. All parts contain toxic quinolizidine alkaloids (anagyrine, cytisine).