Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses

HOARY TICK-CLOVER

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Desmodium canescens (L. ) DC.

Morris County, Kansas

Perennial

Height: 20-60 inches

Family: Fabaceae - Bean Family

Flowering Period: August, September

Stems:

Ascending to erect, usually much-branched, pilose and with minute hooked hairs.

Leaves:

Alternate, odd-pinnately compound, stipules ovate or triangular, 1/5 to 1/2 inch long, 1/8 to 1/5 inch wide, tip acuminate; petiole .4 to 4.3 inches; leaflets 3, ovate to lanceolate, base rounded, margins entire, tip acute or acuminate, surfaces with minute hooked hairs, veins of lower surface conspicuously raised; terminal leaflet 1.2 to 5 inches long, .6 to 2.8 inches wide; lateral leaflets 1.2 to 3.6 inches long, .4 to 2 inches wide.

Inflorescences:

Racemes, terminal and axillary, usually branched; axis and with minute hooked hairs and also glandular-pilose; bracts ovate, 1/8 to 1/4 inch.

Flowers:

Pedicels 1/4 to 3/5 inch; calyx 1/6 to 1/4 inch; corolla papilionaceous, pink, 1/3 to 1/2 inch, often with lighter pair of spots at base of banner; stamens 10, united in two groups.

Fruits:

Loments straight or slightly curved upward; segments 1-6, triangular to rhombic in outline, margins broadly angled abaxially, slightly convex adaxially, 1/4 to 1/2 inch by 1/6 to 1/4 inch. Seeds 1 per segment, brown, ca. 1/6 inch, smooth.

Habitat:

Dry, open floodplain, maple-basswood, and oak-hickory woodlands, river and stream banks, mesic tallgrass prairies.

Distribution:

East 1/2 of Kansas

Origin:

Native

Forage Value:

Bobwhite quail will eat the seeds of Desmodium species.

Comments:

The seeds are distributed when the loments cling to passing animals. There are 12 species of Desmodium documented in Kansas.

Hoary tick-clover