Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses - Little-leaf tick-clover

LITTLE-LEAF TICK-CLOVER

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Desmodium ciliare (Muhl. & Willd.) DC.

Linn County, Kansas

Perennial

Height: 16-40 inches

Family: Fabaceae - Bean Family

Flowering Period: August, September

Stems:

Ascending to erect, usually branched from base, usually densely pilose and uncinate-puberulent, sometimes primarily uncinate-puberulent.

Leaves:

Alternate, odd-pinnately compound; stipules subulate, .08 to .24 inch long; petiole .04 to .6 inch; leaflets 3; leaflet blade ovate to elliptic or oblong, base rounded to truncate or acute, apex obtuse, mucronate, margins entire, surfaces pilose and puberulent, usually less so abaxially, veins of abaxial surface conspicuously raised; terminal leaflet .4 to 1.2 inch long, .2 to .7 inch wide; lateral leaflets .3 to 1 inch long, .12 to .55 inch wide.

Inflorescences:

Racemes, mostly terminal, simple or branched; axis uncinate-puberulent and sometimes also pilose; bracts ovate, .04 to .12 inch. Pedicels .08 to .3 inch.

Flowers:

Papilionaceous; calyx cup-shaped, .08 to .12 inch; corolla pink or white with lighter pair of spots at base of banner, .12 to .2 inch; stamens 10, diadelphous; style glabrous.

Fruits:

Loments, curved downward; segments 1-3, elliptic in outline, margins rounded abaxially, slightly convex adaxially, .14 to .22 inch long, .1 to .16 inch wide; stipe .04 to .07 inch; seeds 1 per segment, flattened, .1 to .13 inch, smooth

Habitat:

Sandy or rocky oak-hickory and post oak-black jack oak woodlands, glades

Distribution:

South half of the east 1/5 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. Desmodium, like a chain, alluding to the jointed legumes and ciliare, eyelid, alluding to hair-like processes along the margins.

Little-leaf tick-clover flower