Lotus hirsutus

Lotus hirsutus, also widely treated as Dorycnium hirsutum and known as hairy canary-clover or hairy bird's-foot trefoil, is a low evergreen sub-shrub in the family Fabaceae, native to the Mediterranean Basin and reaching about 50 to 80 centimetres in height. The whole plant is densely covered in soft, silvery-grey, silky hairs that give it a felted appearance. Leaves are alternate, palmately divided into five obovate to elliptic leaflets, sessile or nearly so on the stem. From early summer into autumn it produces tight terminal umbels of five to twelve small pea-flowers, white to pale pink and often flushed with deeper rose on the keel, followed by short, dark red-brown legume pods about 1 centimetre long containing several seeds. It favours dry, stony, sunny slopes on calcareous soils in maquis and garrigue vegetation around the Mediterranean and is widely cultivated as an ornamental and ground cover in temperate gardens for its silvery foliage and drought tolerance.