Citation: L., Sp. Pl. 771 (1753).

Synonymy: Not Applicable

Common name: Woolly clover, woolly-headed clover.

Description:
Prostrate, erect or ascending tufted annual, glabrous except for the calyx; stems 10-60 cm long, hollow, filled with spongy pith; petioles of the lower leaves longer, shorter distally but always present; leaflets on short but distinct petiolules, often articulate, lower obovate, upper 1ong-cuneate, 4-15 mm long, truncate or retuse, veins simple or once-forked ending in a hooked long mucro; stipules lanceolate-ovate, 5-10 (or more)mm long, fused in the lower half, with subulate free apices, distinctly veined, scarious.

Flowers c. 4 mm long, shortly pedicellate, subtended by a scarious ovate bract c. 0.5 mm long, which at the base of the lower flowers forms a crown-like involucre at the base of the head; heads 7-16- or more-flowered, globose, 6-8 mm, shortly pedunculate or subsessile when young, fruiting heads 6-12 mm diam., usually subsessile; calyx faintly 10-nerved, c. 3.5 mm long, firstly cylindrical, globose-lanate on the upper lip which becomes almost spherical, reticulate, lanate enlarged and inflated in fruit, its 2 subulate teeth remaining short and usually concealed; lower lip glabrescent with lanceolate teeth with long hairs on their margins, unchanged in fruit; corolla pink, exserted, persistent.

Pod ovoid, c. 1.5 mm long, scarious, enclosed, 1- or 2-seeded; seed ovoid, c. 1.3 mm long, brown or green-yellow with dark spots.

Published illustration: Cunningham et al. (1982) Plants of western New South Wales, p. 427.

Distribution:  S.Aust.: GT, FR, EA, EP, NL, MU, YP, SL, KI, SE.   W.Aust.; Qld; N.S.W.; Vic.; Tas.   Native from the Mediterranean to Iran; a weed of cultivated ground in New Zealand. Conservation status: naturalised Flowering time: Sept. — Nov.

SA Distribution Map based on current data relating to specimens held in the State Herbarium of South Australia

Biology: No text

Taxonomic notes: Flowers resupinate, so that the glabrescent lower lip of the calyx with 3 teeth is outside, the smaller upper lip is globose-lanate, with 2 smaller teeth hidden inside the head; the lower lip is enlarged in fruit with 2 short concealed or inconspicuous teeth. Readily distinguished from T. resupinatum in which the enlarged distal upper lip with 2 conspicuous teeth protrudes.

Author: Not yet available