Compilation
Medicago aschersoniana

Spreading annual herb, branching from the base. Leaves petiolate; leaflets 4–15 × 2–7 mm, narrowly cuneate-obovate or cuneate-oblong, truncate to retuse and apiculate at the apex, denticulate in the upper half or deeply toothed or irregularly laciniate, glabrous above, sparsely pilose beneath; petioles up to 2.5 cm long; rhachis up to 5 mm long; stipules laciniate, with simple hairs beneath. Inflorescence 1–2-flowered; peduncle produced into an arista beyond the terminal flower. Flowers very small, with pedicels shorter than the calyx tube. Calyx 3–4 mm long, sparsely appressed-hairy; teeth equal, shorter than the tube, hairy. Corolla yellow, twice as long as the calyx; standard ovate, longer than the keel; wings shorter than the keel; keel blunt, oblong. Pod cylindrical to ellipsoid, usually glabrous, spiny; coils 3–7, turning anticlockwise, the broadest coil 3–5 mm in diameter, not strongly appressed to each other; surface of coils with numerous S-shaped radial veins, not anastomosing before joining the submarginal vein near to the dorsal suture; grooves between dorsal suture and submarginal vein of pod narrow (invisible in side view of pod); spines 2–4 mm long, with 2-rooted base, one root arising in the dorsal suture, the other in the submarginal vein, the longer ones hooked at the tip, divergent and intermeshing with those of adjoining coils. Seeds 5–10 per pod, c. 3 mm long, oblong to subreniform, yellowish, smooth.