Iberian milk-vetch

Erophaca baetica (L.) Boiss. (Fabaceae), the Iberian milk-vetch or alfalfa arbórea, is a robust suffrutescent perennial herb of the western Mediterranean basin, occurring widely across the Iberian Peninsula, the Balearic Islands, southern France, Italy, North Africa and parts of southwestern Asia. Often segregated as the sole species of its genus from Astragalus, it forms coarse leafy clumps 50-150 cm tall arising from a stout woody rootstock. The pinnately compound leaves are 10-25 cm long with 21-41 oblong-elliptic leaflets 2-4 cm long, pale green, sparsely appressed-pubescent beneath. From the upper axils arise long-peduncled, dense, ovoid racemes of large creamy-white pea-flowers 2-2.5 cm long with broad standard petals. The pod is highly distinctive: a strongly inflated, bladdery, papery-walled, ovoid legume 4-6 cm long that becomes pendulous and rattles when dry, dispersing the few large seeds by wind. It grows in open scrub, dry pastures and roadsides on a range of substrates.