I am trying to create a good list of 30 to 50 edible legume species, and I am having trouble finding good information on the internet. Here's some of them I have so far: 1. mesquite tree 2. some species of vetch 3. red clover 4. prairie clover 5. hog peanut 6. groundnut 7. white clover 8. birds foot trefoil 9. honey locust or black locust 10. red bud 11. alfalfa I have heard of lupines, tick trefoils, and indigos, sweet pea. But most of these species are poisonous or don't have many uses for food. What species of legume haven't I heard of that are common in North America?
*scratch chin* I hope the list will be more nuanced than that. The only part of bird foot's trefoil that is edible -- maybe -- is nibbling on the young seedpods (according to the Plants for a Future database). Even then, one is exposing oneself to this: "All parts of the plant are poisonous, containing cyanogenic glycosides(hydrogen cyanide)". The legume family is among the more poisonous plant families in North America, complicated by the difficulty in identification for a casual identifier. One you did miss was Psoralea esculenta (or Pediomelum esculentum). My approach to generating a list like this would be to get a list of leguminous genera of North America (available from the USDA PLANTS database) and then cross-reference that against Moerman's Ethnobotany Database (though the book is better and easier to use)
My book says birdsfoot trefoil (lotus corniculatus) is edible and the flowers and leaves can be great in salads.
Purchase a better book? About 50 papers discussing the toxicity of Lotus corniculatus on the FDA Poisonous Plants Database. Admittedly, there is mention of polymorphism for the cyanogenic glycosides -- some genetic strains have and some don't, it seems.
