Glycyrrhiza lepidota

Wild licorice, Wild Licorice

Family: Fabaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Wild licorice is a California native perennial found in moist, open disturbed areas including streambanks and roadsides at elevations below 2,000 meters. Flowering from May to July, this plant produces pale yellow to green-white flowers with a faint purple tinge, clustered in dense inflorescences. Growing with stems that range from completely smooth to glandular-hairy, it forms colonies in various habitats including alkaline soils. Its compound leaves feature 9 to 19 narrow leaflets, each lanceolate to ovate in shape. The fruit develops 12 to 20 millimeters long, contributing to the plant's distinctive legume characteristics.

Habitat: In colonies, moist, generally open, disturbed areas including streambanks, roadsides, alkaline soils or not

Bloom period: May-Jul

Elevation: < 2000 m

Bioregions: CA

California counties: Riverside, Kern, Los Angeles, Ventura, Inyo, San Bernardino, Orange, San Luis Obispo, San Joaquin, Imperial, San Benito, San Diego, Mendocino, Alameda, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Fresno, Tulare, Sonoma, Lake, Contra Costa, Mono, Shasta, Solano, Sacramento, Yolo, Butte, Merced, Glenn, Colusa, Tehama, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Stanislaus, Amador, Napa, Siskiyou, Humboldt, Tuolumne, Del Norte

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.