femoral nerve

The femoral nerve, the largest branch of the lumbar plexus, arises from the ventral divisions of the second, third, and fourth lumbar nerves. It descends through the fibers of the Psoas major, emerging from the muscle at the lower part of its lateral border, and passes down between it and the Iliacus, behind the iliac fascia; it then runs beneath the inguinal ligament, into the thigh, and splits into an anterior and a posterior division. Under the inguinal ligament, it is separated from the femoral artery by a portion of the Psoas major. [WP,unvetted]. Every claim on this page comes from the Leumas anatomy graph and carries its source.

What the femoral nerve is

The femoral nerve, the largest branch of the lumbar plexus, arises from the ventral divisions of the second, third, and fourth lumbar nerves. It descends through the fibers of the Psoas major, emerging from the muscle at the lower part of its lateral border, and passes down between it and the Iliacus, behind the iliac fascia; it then runs beneath the inguinal ligament, into the thigh, and splits into an anterior and a posterior division. Under the inguinal ligament, it is separated from the femoral artery by a portion of the Psoas major. [WP,unvetted]. The atlas records it as a nerve at the organ scale in the human body.

Where the femoral nerve is

It sits in the lower limb, within the nervous system. Positioned deliberately as part of this species body plan.

What the femoral nerve connects to

The atlas records 14 typed relationships for it, across 5 kinds of connection. part of hindlimb, leg and limb.

Supply and innervation

This dataset asserts no arterial supply, venous drainage or innervation for the femoral nerve. Only a minority of structures carry those edges here, so an empty answer means nothing has been recorded — not that there is nothing to record.

Also called

Also recorded as anterior crural nerve and nervus femoralis. Searching any of those names reaches this page.

Source

Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology (Mungall et al.), CC BY 4.0. Term UBERON:0001267, version 2026-06-19, retrieved 2026-08-24. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.

• Part of: hindlimb, leg and limb.
• A kind of: nerve.
• Innervates: musculature of lower limb, iliacus muscle, iliopsoas, pectineus muscle, quadriceps femoris and rectus femoris, and 2 more.
• branching part of: saphenous nerve.
• contains: saphenous nerve.

Questions

Where is the femoral nerve?

It sits in the lower limb, within the nervous system. Positioned deliberately as part of this species body plan.

What does the femoral nerve connect to?

Part of: hindlimb, leg and limb.

Is the femoral nerve the same in other species?

Leumas holds the same relationship vocabulary for every species it carries, so where another dataset records this structure you can put the two side by side on /compare.