Cicer milk-vetch

Astragalus cicer, the cicer milk-vetch or chickpea milk-vetch, is a rhizomatous perennial legume in the family Fabaceae, native to dry grasslands, steppes and open woodland of central and eastern Europe and western Asia, and widely introduced into temperate North America as a forage and erosion-control plant. It forms loose colonies of decumbent to ascending, hollow, sparsely hairy stems 30-100 cm long, bearing pinnately compound leaves with 10-15 pairs of oblong to elliptic leaflets 1-3 cm long. Dense, axillary, ovoid racemes 3-4 cm long carry numerous pale-yellow pea-flowers about 13-16 mm long in early to mid-summer, followed by inflated, three-cornered, ovoid black-hairy pods 8-15 mm long containing several olive-green seeds. Unlike many Astragalus species it is non-toxic to livestock and contains little or no nitrotoxin or selenium.