A charming plant, a few inches tall, with thick, glossy, dark green leaves, paler and hairy on the under side, and pure-white flowers, with bright yellow centers. They are about an inch across and are well set off by the masses of dark foliage. This has large, delicious berries and grows abundantly on beaches and sand dunes near the sea, from San Francisco to Alaska. It is often cultivated.
Sand Strawberry—Fragaria Chiloensis.
PEA FAMILY. Fabaceae.
A very large family, including many important plants, such as Clover, Alfalfa, Peas, and Beans; herbs, shrubs, vines, and trees, distinguished principally by the flower and fruit, resembling the butterfly-like corolla and simple pod of the common Pea; leaves alternate, usually compound, with leaflets and stipules; calyx five-toothed or five-cleft; petals five. The upper petal, or "standard," large, covering the others in the bud, the two at the sides standing out like "wings," the two lower ones united by their edges to form a "keel," enclosing the stamens, usually ten, and the single pistil with a curved style; the ovary superior.
There are numerous kinds of Anisolotus, widely distributed, common, difficult to distinguish; mostly herbs, some slightly shrubby; leaves with two or many, toothless leaflets; calyx-teeth nearly equal; petals with claws, free from the stamens, wings adhering to the keel, incurved, blunt or beaked; stamens joined by their filaments, in two sets of one and nine, anthers all alike; style incurved; pods two-valved, often compressed between the seeds, never inflated. These plants have several common names, such as Bird-foot, Trefoil, Cat's-clover, etc., and are called Crowtoes by Milton.
Pretty Bird-foot
Anisolòtus formosíssimus (Lotus) (Hosackia)
Pink and yellow
Spring
Wash., Oreg., Cal.
A gay and charming kind, with smooth stems, spreading on the ground, light green leaves, with five or more leaflets, and flowers about half an inch long, with a golden-yellow standard, pink or magenta wings and wine-colored keel, forming a flattish cluster, the contrasting colors giving a vivid effect. This grows in damp places along the sea-coast.
Bird-foot
Anisolòtus argyraèus (Lotus) (Hosackia)
Yellow
Spring
California
A shrubby, branching plant, a foot and a half high, forming a pretty clump, two or three feet across, with downy, gray-green stems and foliage, sprinkled with clover-like heads of yellow flowers. The leaflets are slightly thickish, covered with silky down, the twigs and young leaves silvery-white. The small flowers are a soft shade of warm-yellow, and the buds form neat, fuzzy, silvery balls. This grows on dry hillsides in the Catalina Islands.