I can see 🥜︎ legume / bean / pea branches family Fabaceae

Learn more about 🥜︎ legume / bean / pea family Fabaceae

Part of order Fabales.

Legumes are native 🌐︎ worldwide, in all tropical, temperate and subarctic forests and grasslands, absent only in arctic and antarctic tundra, and 🏜 the most arid deserts.  🗺 Map (🇨🇦 Canada, 🇺🇸 USA) (color key).

Uses by native peoples
(Ethnobotany database)

Most legumes cooperate with a bacterium that fixes atmospheric nitrogen into a form usable by plants and animals.

That allows these plants to:

• outcompete non-nitrogen-fixing plants in poorer soils, or
• have seeds and foliage with more protein.

This makes their seeds and foliage more nutritious to plant-eaters.  And growing these plants may improve the quality of worn-out farmland and disturbed soils.

🔍︎ 🔍︎ images Discover Life Encyclopedia of Life Flora of North America Wikipedia