Ononis hispida Desf.
Eng.: Restharrow. Fre.: Bugrane hispide.
Shrub up to 1.5 m in height, unarmed, hermaphrodite, evergreen, erect and highly branched, sometimes even somewhat intricate. Stems and old branches tortuous, with bark greyish-brown to whitish, finally glabrous. Young branchlets herbaceous, green or reddish-brown, villous. Leaves alternate, trifoliolate, petiolate, with stipules partially fused to the petiole; leaflets 5-15 × 3-12 mm, obovate or suborbicular, denticulate, lateral leaflets subsessile and central leaflet petiolulate, green, hairy-glanduliferous at least on the underside. Inflorescences racemiform, terminal, lax or dense, with flowers shortly pedicellate, solitary in the axils of each bract; bracts similar to the leaves but unifoliolate, or sometimes the uppermost bracts reduced to stipules. Calyx 8-13 mm, greenish, villous-glandular, with long glanduliferous and eglandular hairs, deeply split into 5 linear-lanceolate teeth, longer than the tube. Corolla 13-20 mm, papilionoid, pinkish, with pink standard on the upper part and whitish towards the base, with purple veins, hairy-glandular, wings and keel whitish-pink, roughly the same length. Androecium monadelphous, with 10 stamens. Ovary hairy and capitated stigma. Pod c. 7 × 4.5 mm, ± ovoid, hairy, included in the calyx or as long as the calyx, with 2 seeds. Seeds globose, tuberculate, brownish.
Flowering:
May to July.
Fruiting:
July to September.
Habitat:
Forests, thickets and rocky outcrops on very diverse types of terrain, from almost sea level to 1,600 m, in semiarid to humid bioclimate.
Distribution:
Sicily and NW Africa (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia).
Observations:
There are 2 recognised subspecies in the territory. O. hispida Desf. subsp. hispida, includes plants with lax racemiform inflorescences, and pods shorter than the calyx. It is present in the eastern Tellian Atlas, in the Belezma Massif, in the Saharan Atlas (peaks NE of Djelfa) and NW Tunisia (Krumiria and Mogods), and also in Sicily. O. hispida subsp. arborescens (Desf.) Širj. (O. arborescens Desf.), differs from the previous subspecies in its inflorescences, that are grouped together into dense racemiform conflorescences and the pods subequal to the calyx. It is a North African endemic distributed in northern Morocco (from the central and eastern Rif to the northern Middle Atlas), Algeria (littoral and sublittoral mountains of the region of Oran, mountains S of Algiers and Little Kabylia), and northern Libya.
Conservation status:
A rare but widely distributed species, not considered threatened. Currently, it has not been assessed at a global level in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.