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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-1151
Crown Vetch
Coronilla varia
Crown Vetch is a low, trailing perennial legume that spreads by both seed and a network of tough rhizomes, quickly forming a dense mat topped with clusters of pink and purple flowers through late spring. Its roots fix nitrogen and feed the ground as they break down, and a single plant can knit together 750 to 1100 square feet of bank or slope within four years, which is why it has long been sown to hold roadcuts and eroding ground. The whole plant carries a toxic glycoside, so while it has fed grazing livestock elsewhere, anyone using it as fodder should introduce it to animals gradually and watch how they do.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 3–7
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Moist · Well-Drained
Vertical layer
Groundcover- Soil pH
- 5–8
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 12–36 in
- Mature spread
- 3.3 ft
- Plant spacing
- Not yet recorded
- Root type
- Rhizome
- Spread pattern
- Both
Keep exploring
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Waldsteinia fragarioides
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Beach Strawberry
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Bilberry
Vaccinium myrtillus
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Black Medick
Medicago lupulina
Black Medick is a low, sprawling nitrogen-fixing clover relative that forms a mowable mat through fall, winter and spring before dying back…
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Carpet Bugle
Ajuga reptans
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Catmint
Nepeta racemosa
Catmint blooms from spring through the end of summer if the spent flower spikes are sheared after each flush, holding nectar for pollinators…
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The deeper layer
Plan what comes next.
- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
- Locked ecological function
- Byproduct
- Locked ecological function
Behind the record
- Locked research reference
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