The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Ononis spinosa
Also called Thorny Restharrow, Restharrow
Spiny restharrow is a bushy, spiny, wiry-stemmed perennial in the pea family, growing up to about 60 cm, found on lime-rich grassland and chalk soils. It is closely related to common restharrow and is best grown in full sun with lean, free-draining, alkaline soil.
Ononis spinosa is a flowering plant belonging to the family Fabaceae, that is commonly known as spiny restharrow or just restharrow. It is found throughout much of Europe including Britain, but rarely as far north as Scotland. It is closely related to Ononis repens (common restharrow); the two are considered conspecific by the Plants of the World Online database, with O. repens treated as a subspecies of O. spinosa as Ononis spinosa subsp. procurrens. The Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland treats them as separate species.
Spiny restharrow is found in southern temperate areas of Europe and Siberia. In Great Britain, it has a more southeasterly distribution than O. repens, occurring widely in central and southeastern England, scarce in Wales and southwestern and northern England, and only at a very few sites in the south of Scotland. It is not native in Ireland, only found there as a rare introduced plant. Its typical habitat is lime-rich, but nutrient-poor grassland on chalk and heavy, calcareous soils.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Ononis spinosa by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
