Plant · P-298

Goats Rue

Tephrosia virginiana

Goats Rue fixes its own nitrogen and produces rotenone in its roots, a broad-spectrum natural insecticide long used to poison fish - not something to feed livestock despite the name, since every part of the plant is toxic enough that goat's-milk feeding was abandoned once the toxin was understood. It grows slowly from seed that is difficult to start and hard to divide, so a planting neither spreads nor replaces itself once established. Sources disagree sharply on how much shade it tolerates, some rating it full sun only and others full to deep shade - which matters, because a shade-tolerant nitrogen fixer is unusual.