Onobrychis supina

Onobrychis supina, the prostrate sainfoin, is a low-growing perennial herb in the Fabaceae native to dry calcareous grasslands, rocky slopes and open pinewoods around the western and central Mediterranean, from Spain and France eastward to Italy and the Balkans. The plant arises from a stout, woody, deep taproot and produces several prostrate to ascending, finely silky-hairy stems 10 to 30 centimetres long. The alternate, imparipinnately compound leaves bear 11 to 21 small oblong to obovate leaflets 5 to 15 millimetres long, sparsely silky beneath, with entire margins. Showy pink to purplish-pink pea-shaped flowers about 10 to 14 millimetres long, conspicuously dark-veined on the standard petal, are borne in elongated cylindrical racemes 3 to 8 centimetres long held above the foliage on long axillary peduncles. The fruit is a small, indehiscent, one-seeded pod 5 to 8 millimetres across, characteristically flattened, semicircular and ornamented on the faces and margins with a network of low ridges and short curved spines that aid in epizoochorous dispersal.