Lotus maritimus
Asparagus pea ( Lotus maritimus )
The asparagus pea ( Lotus maritimus, Syn: Tetragonolobus maritimus (L.) Roth), also known as asparagus clover, asparagus bean or Asparagus Without, is a flowering plant in the family Fabaceae of ( Faboideae ). Their main area of distribution includes the Mediterranean and Central Europe.
Description
Appearance and leaf
The asparagus pea grows as a perennial herbaceous plant. It has a strong base axis and thin soil foothills. The stems and leaves are more or less covered with short or bald and usually bluish green color. The angular stem is decumbent to ascending, branched at the base, and usually 10 to 20 cm long.
The leaves are usually pinnate somewhat fleshy and five parts. The lower leaves are always smaller than the top and how the stipules short adherent to the petiole. You are wrong ovate, pointed and slightly longer than the approximately 0.6 to 1.2 cm long petiole. The three terminal leaflets are short- petiolate to nearly sessile, wedge-shaped base from obovate to deltoidisch, up to 3 cm long and up to 1.5 cm wide. They are of a rounded or pointed shape, have no distinct lateral nerves and are usually only on the edge and on the midrib ciliate.
Inflorescence, flower, fruit and seeds
The flowering time is during the months of May to July. The relatively strong inflorescence stem is about 5 to 15 cm long and several times longer than the bearing deciduous leaf. The inflorescences are always flowered. Under the flower is a small, usually dreizähliges cover sheet. The hermaphrodite flowers are zygomorphic and fünfzählig double perianth. The calyx is tubular and bell-shaped, often purple crowded and has an approximately 1 cm long, indistinct network annoying tube with about half as long, usually ciliate teeth. The two upper cup teeth are wider than the bottom, and together eigend. The 2.5 and 3 cm long crown is sulfur yellow and run more or less brick-red when fading. The flag is much longer than the wings and the boat and has a nearly circular, reddish brown striped plate and a slightly shorter nail. The wings are obovate and cover the top downward greenish boat.
The straight and slightly compressed pulses are 4-5 cm long and about 3 mm wide; they are provided with four smooth about 1 mm wide longitudinal wings. The legumes are glabrous or sparsely hairy, last colored sepia brown, jumping up late, ranging inside and vielsamig.
Smooth, olive and more or less black dot seeds are nearly spherical with a diameter of about 2 mm.
Ecology
The underground parts of asparagus pea develop an unpleasant odor. The leaflets show in this type particularly pronounced Night Moves.
The nectar is only accessible to such insects (especially bumblebees ), which have a minimum of 12 mm long trunk; kurzrüsselige types get to this only through a slump.
Occurrence and risk
Lotus maritimus is an Südmediterran - Central European Florenelement. The closed area of distribution extends from northwest Africa to Spain and France to southern Scandinavia in the north, in the east to Poland and Romania, in the south to NW- Yugoslavia, northern Italy, Corsica and Sardinia. Individual reserves are found in the Crimea and on the Caucasian Black Sea coast.
The asparagus pea is in Central Europe, absent-minded until rare. In Germany this type usually comes scattered and relatively rare in central and southwestern area, as well as in southern Bavaria. In Bavaria only in the south scattered, otherwise very rare. In Germany, the hazard is in Category 3: endangered classified.
The asparagus pea grows on nutrient-rich and least in spring wet soils. It occurs in meadows and pastures, salt marshes and in calcareous source Riedern.