# Lesser bean-trefoil (Anagyris foetida)

**Anagiride minore**

**Known today as.** Stinking bean trefoil, *Anagyris foetida*, a Mediterranean shrub. “Female bean trefoil” in the oil of ch. 9 is the same plant.

Kind: Plant  
Poisoning: Nicotinic poisoning (coniine, nicotine, cytisine) (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/nicotinic)  
Toxic: yes

> **Caution.** 

## What did Canale use it for?

Seeds and inner bark as a powerful vomit (chs. 5, 9).

## What does modern science say?

A genuine emetic and purgative, and poisonous; the plant contains cytisine, anagyrine, and related alkaloids.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **cytisine**: a quinolizidine alkaloid
- **anagyrine**: the alkaloid named for the plant, teratogenic in cattle
- **N-methylcytisine**: 

**Mechanism.** *Anagyris foetida*, the stinking bean trefoil: its seeds and bark carry cytisine and anagyrine, nicotinic agonists that vomit violently and then, in quantity, paralyse breathing; Canale’s “powerful vomit” was a laburnum-class poisoning stopped at the vomiting. Anagyrine causes crooked-calf disease in cattle that graze lupins.

**Dose.** A few seeds vomit; more has killed; there is no therapeutic margin.

**Standing.** No use; a plant of the Mediterranean scrub avoided by goats.

## What lore surrounds it?

Folkard records the ancient aversion to beans “arising from the resemblance of the fruit to a portion of the human body”: Pythagoras “recognised blood, and consequently an animal,” and was killed “because, having in his flight reached a field of Beans, he would not cross it for fear of trampling upon living beings, the souls of the dead.” The Roman Lemures went by night “throwing Beans against” houses, and in May the people threw black beans on graves. Of the trefoil, “among the Romans, the Grass crown made of Trefoil-leaves was esteemed a mark of very high honour.”

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Describes the anagyros, “known to some by the name of acopon,” as a shrub-like plant “with an offensive smell,” a blossom like the cabbage, and a kidney-shaped seed in long horn-like pods that hardens at harvest; its leaves are applied to gatherings and “attached to the person in cases of difficult parturition, care being taken to remove them the moment after delivery.”

## Sources

- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 27.13, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Beans.” Project Gutenberg #44638.
- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Trefoil.” Project Gutenberg #44638.
- Frohne, D., and Pfänder, H. J. (2005). *Poisonous Plants*, 2nd ed., “Fabaceae.”
- Keeler, R. F. (1989). “Piperidine alkaloid composition and relation to crooked calf disease-inducing potential of *Lupinus formosus*.” *Teratology* 40.

---

*Lesser bean-trefoil.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/lesser-bean-trefoil

Historical description, not medical advice.