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Birdfoot Trefoil

Lotus corniculatus · Fabaceae · all Lotus records

Your local evidence lens

Separate evidence questions, never one approval badge

Set a ZIP to compare this record with state distribution, native range, USDA hardiness, and invasive records.

A genus split is not a placement verdict. Set a ZIP to read the local documented split.

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions
No test or rating condition is normalized.
Fire ecology context
No section-reviewed fire-ecology context is normalized.
Placement evidence
1 source placement record; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
Global; New Zealand; southern Idaho / Intermountain
Maintenance
No sourced horticultural maintenance assertion is normalized; fire-test conditions do not supply maintenance advice.
Typed publication scope: 1 scope across 1 cited fire source
  • Fire Resistance of Plants Master Database · Official scoped edition
    • Southern Idaho (ID footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2013-11-08

      The official database labels itself "For Southern Idaho" and describes Idaho residents at the urban-rangeland interface. FireApproved publishes 419 existing plant owners that cite its scored rows. This bounded Southern Idaho scope is regional context, not statewide coverage or a conclusion that the score transfers unchanged to every Idaho site.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, GA, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV, WY.
Native range
No current cited or legacy state native range is normalized.
Introduced / established
15 sourced range or established records; set a location to match them. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 4a; no upper limit is documented.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Legal-list status
Set a location for an exact legal-list result; source silence is not clearance.
Seed-list status
Set a location to compare the separate state noxious-weed seed layer.
Reported invasive here
2 ecological invasive reports; set a location to distinguish exact from regional context.
Broader regional context
Aggregate AK, HI, and L48 evidence is shown only as regional context, never as an exact-state finding.
Federal context
Federal designations remain separate from state legal-list results.
How to read this page

The status above is computed from the cited rows below: independent recommendations can support a fire-resistant result, an avoid row can produce keep-away, and disagreement stays visible as conflict. Placement notes preserve each source’s own scheme rather than translating unlike rules into one scale. This is evidence about a plant, not permission to plant it in every part of the defensible space; Zone 0 remains noncombustible.

Birdfoot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus)
Photo: (c) Tom Scavo, some rights reserved (CC BY) (CC BY), via iNaturalist. Species-typical, not necessarily this cultivar.
Form
perennial
USDA hardiness
Minimum 4a; upper limit not documented
Mature height
~1 ft
Water need
high
Grows in
AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, DE +36
Rated in
Global; New Zealand; southern Idaho / Intermountain
Family
Fabaceae
Evidence
3 cited sources

Native and introduced range evidence

These are exact U.S. botanical-area records from the cited range source. Native and introduced describe biogeographic relationship, not fire performance or planting approval. Doubtful and extinct rows stay visible but do not count as current presence.

Current native

0

exact source areas

Current introduced

15

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

15 introduced source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Alabama (AL)
  • Arkansas (AR)
  • California (CA)
  • Colorado (CO)
  • Idaho (ID)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • Minnesota (MN)
  • New Mexico (NM)
  • Nevada (NV)
  • Oregon (OR)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • Washington (WA)
  • Wisconsin (WI)

The lossless worldwide derivative is retained once in the research corpus; object pages repeat only exact U.S. areas needed by the local lens. The JSON twin carries the same page assertions.

Plant hardiness evidence

These values describe the plant source. Your ZIP zone comes from the separate 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Whole-zone values stay whole-zone, and a single unresolved value is not treated as a tolerance range. Different source boundaries stay separate: overlapping statements are compared independently, while only ranges with no shared zone are called a conflict.

Where its sources say to plant it

Placement rules below use each source's own distances or named zones, tied to its rating. They are not interchangeable with the directory's current Zone 0 guidance.

The evidence

Grouped by what each source concluded. Primary evidence rated the plant itself (a lab, field program, or original curation); corroboration compiled or republished another source's rating and resolves to its root lineage.

Recommends (2)

Listed without a rating (1)

Same genus in the directory · the Lotus group page

Last verified 2026-08-23. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

Profiles: USDA PLANTS · GBIF · iNaturalist · Wikidata · ITIS

Lotus corniculatus (Birdfoot Trefoil). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/lotus-corniculatus/. Last verified 2026-08-23.