Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses - Breadroot scurf-pea

BREADROOT SCURF-PEA

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Pediomelum esculentum (Pursh ) Rydb.

[=Psoralea esculenta Pursh]

Mitchell County, Kansas

Perennial

Height: 3-12 inches

Family: Fabaceae - Bean Family

Flowering Period: May, June

Also Called:

Indian breadroot, prairie turnip, prairie potato.

Stems:

Erect, 1-3, simple or rarely branched, densely hairy.

Leaves:

Alternate, on hairy stalks 1 to 6 inches long, palmately 5-foliolate; leaflets elliptic to oblong lanceolate, 1 to 2 inches long, 1/2 to 3/4 inch wide, mostly glabrous above, appressed-hairy below; tips rounded, blunt or pointed.

Inflorescences:

Racemes, spike-like, dense, about 2 inches long, 1 inch thick, on stout stalks in leaf axils.

Flowers:

Calyces bell-shaped, 5-lobed, hairy; corollas papilionaceous, to 3/4 inch long, blue, fading yellowish; stamens 10, 9 united, 1 free.

Fruits:

Pods, egg-shaped, beaked; seeds 1, oblong, smooth, brownish.

Habitat:

Prairie hillsides, plains, bluffs, stream valleys, and open woodlands.

Distribution:

Throughout except southwest corner of Kansas.

Uses:

Breadroot scurf-pea probably was the most important wild food gathered by Native Americans of the Great Plains. The tuberous root can be eaten raw, cooked, or dried. By mid-summer, the leaves and stem break off and blow away. Plains tribes dug the tubers before the tops were gone and often dried them for winter use.

Comments:

Breadroot scurf-pea will decrease with grazing and is uncommon outside of undisturbed prairie.

Breadroot scurf-pea