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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-1158
Flemingia
Flemingia macrophylla
Flemingia is a tropical shrub planted mainly as a living nitrogen source and weed-smothering mulch, grown as a hedgerow along the contour or in alleys between food crops and cut back every month or so. The slow-rotting leaf litter blankets the ground and blocks weeds for months while the roots hold soil on slopes and terraces. Its dried seed pods carry a purple-orange powder that has long been rubbed off and used to dye silk and cotton a deep golden yellow. Frost kills it outright, so it only survives outdoors where winters stay well above freezing.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 10–12
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Moist · Wet · Dry
Vertical layer
Shrub- Soil pH
- 5–7
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 3.3–13.1 ft
- Mature spread
- 9.8 ft
- Plant spacing
- 20 in
- Root type
- Not yet recorded
- Spread pattern
- None
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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
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