Melilotus indicus(L.) All.

small melilot

WFO wfo-0000185378 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Melilotus indicus, photographed by James C. Davis
fig. a James C. Davis, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-05-31 / obs. 202322899
Melilotus indicus, photographed by Daniela Costa
fig. b Daniela Costa, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199304868
Melilotus indicus, photographed by Tom and T Herman
fig. c Tom and T Herman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201237995
Melilotus indicus, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. d Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199377119
Melilotus indicus, photographed by Chuck Wilson
fig. e Chuck Wilson, CC0 1.0 / obs. 198563654
Melilotus indicus, photographed by Neal Kelso
fig. f Neal Kelso, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198125679
Melilotus indicus, photographed by Chuck Wilson
fig. g Chuck Wilson, CC0 1.0 / obs. 196951677
Melilotus indicus, photographed by velodrome
fig. h velodrome, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202058687

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 2,193 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 2,193 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 40 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Medicago parviflora (Desf.) E.H.L.Krause
  • Melilotus berardii Medik.
  • Melilotus bonplandii Ten.
  • Melilotus boumettii Hornem.
  • Melilotus brachystachyus Willd. ex Spreng.
  • Melilotus exaltatus Bianca
  • Melilotus indica (L.) All.
  • Melilotus indicus subsp. permixtus (Jord.) Rouy
  • Melilotus indicus var. bonplandii (Ten.) O.E.Schulz
  • Melilotus indicus var. exaltatus Rouy
  • Melilotus indicus var. laxiflorus Rouy
  • Melilotus indicus var. parvulus Rouy
  • Melilotus indicus var. permixtus (Jord.) P.Fourn.
  • Melilotus melilotus-indica Asch. & Graebn.
  • Melilotus melilotus-indicus Asch. & Graebn.
  • Melilotus minimus Roth
  • Melilotus neapolitanus var. macrocarpus Rouy
  • Melilotus occidentalis Nutt.
  • Melilotus parviflora Desf.
  • Melilotus parviflorus Trautv.
  • Melilotus parviflorus Desf.
  • Melilotus parviflorus var. rubrocalyx Herder
  • Melilotus permixtus Jord.
  • Melilotus reticulatus Pomel

and 16 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.