Plant · P-296

Purple Prairie Clover

Dalea purpurea

Purple Prairie Clover is a warm-season native legume that fixes its own nitrogen and roots deep enough - a taproot to five or six feet - to shrug off drought and punch through heavy clay. Livestock love it, and it is one of the rare high-tannin forages that does not cause bloat, while its June-to-September bloom keeps native bees, bumble bees and butterflies fed after the cool-season clovers are spent. The catch is patience: it takes two years to first flower and three before a stand is worth grazing, and stock will eat it out of a pasture if it is set-stocked rather than rotated.