Leadplant

Amorpha canescens, commonly known as leadplant or prairie shoestring, is a deciduous perennial shrub or subshrub in the family Fabaceae native to the central and eastern North American prairies and open woodlands, from the Great Plains east to the Great Lakes and south to Texas. It typically grows 0.3 to 1 metre tall from a deep, woody, branching taproot, with several erect to ascending stems clothed in dense silvery-grey hairs that give the plant its characteristic leaden, hoary appearance. The leaves are pinnately compound, 5 to 15 centimetres long, with 15 to 45 small oblong leaflets that are densely hairy on both surfaces. From early to midsummer it produces dense, narrow terminal spikes 5 to 20 centimetres long of small but distinctive flowers, each with a single violet-purple petal (the standard) and ten contrasting bright orange anthers projecting beyond the corolla. The fruit is a small, curved, gland-dotted single-seeded pod. The species is a deep-rooted, nitrogen-fixing, drought-tolerant component of tallgrass prairie.