146 The Romance of Wild Flowers 
But this is not so curious as the pod of the Horse- 
shoe Vetch (Hippocrepis comosa), which is flat but 
serpentine, with the upper margin notched. When 
ripe, this quaint pod breaks at the notches into from 
three to six horseshoe-shaped joints, each containing 
a single seed. The leaves are similar to those of 
Sain-foin, though with fewer leaflets; and the yellow 
flowers present a resemblance to the more plentiful 
Bird’s-foot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus), which gets 
its name from the fact that when three or four of the 
inch-long cylindrical pods radiate from the common 
stalk they resemble a bird’s foot. But this species 
must not be confused with the rare Bird’s - foot 
(Ornithopus perpusillus), whose jointed pods present 
a closer resemblance to the scale-clad toes of a 
bird. 
The common species of Lotus already mentioned is a 
convenient, because readily accessible, example to take 
of those non-climbing leguminous plants that have 
large and distinct flowers. The leaves are here 
divided into five leaflets, though they appear to be 
trefoils, the lowest pair of leaflets being near the base 
of the leaf, and the stipules very minute. From 
three to ten flowers are borne at the end of a long 
flower-stalk, and individually these have such very 
short foot-stalks that the cluster forms a “head,” or 
capitate cyme, to express the same thing technically. 
The anthers discharge their pollen into the keel 
before the petals have attained their full size, and by 
the time the bud expands the anthers have shrivelled 
up, but five of the filaments have continued to grow 
and thicken so that they press the pollen into the tip 
of the keel and keep it in position. Up through this 
