Hylodesmum glutinosum

Hylodesmum glutinosum, the pointed-leaf tick-trefoil (formerly Desmodium glutinosum), is a perennial herbaceous plant in the Fabaceae (subfamily Faboideae) native to deciduous forests of eastern North America from southern Ontario and Quebec south to Texas and Florida. Plants arise from a stout rhizomatous rootstock and produce a single erect stem 30 to 100 centimetres tall, glabrous below and finely pubescent above. A whorl-like cluster of long-petiolate trifoliolate leaves is borne at the summit of the otherwise leafless stem, each terminal leaflet broadly ovate to rhombic, abruptly acuminate, 5 to 15 centimetres long, with the lateral leaflets smaller and asymmetric. From the centre of this leaf whorl arises a slender, elongate terminal raceme or panicle of small pinkish purple pea-flowers. The fruit is a flat, deeply constricted, jointed loment whose segments are densely covered with hooked, glandular hairs that adhere strongly to fur and clothing, dispersing seeds epizoochorously.