It has between 2 and 6 small yellow flowers in each head which helps to distinguish it from Lesser trefoil (T. dubium) which has up to 15.

Road verges, grassy tracks, gravelly and waste places.

June to August.

Annual.

Occasional but widespread records from England and Wales, fewer records from Scotland.

Near scarce, but probably under recorded in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the Flora of Leicestershire (Primavesi and Evans 1988) it was found in 8 of the 617 tetrads.

It was on the 2011 VC55 Rare Plant Register (Jeeves, 2011) but does not meet the criteria for the current RPR (Hall and Woodward, 2022)