Plant Name

Scientific Name: Dalea pulchra

Common Names: Santa Catalina Prairie Clover, Indigo Bush, Dalea

Plant Characteristics

Duration: Perennial, Semi-evergreen

Growth Habit: Shrub, Subshrub

Arizona Native Status: Native

Habitat: Desert, Upland. It grows on rocky slopes and in the mountain foothills. These plants are especially common in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, Arizona.

Flower Color: Purple, White

Flowering Season: Winter (late), Spring

Height: To 4 feet (1.2 m) tall

Description: The small, pea-like flowers are in ball-shaped, fuzzy, whitish, terminal flower spikes. The individual flowers have white banner petals and a purple keel and wings. Some plants have flowers with purple banner petals and a white keel and wings. The leaves are gray-green, covered in velvety hair, and pinnately compound with 3 to 9 oval, folded leaflets. The plants have a bushy, branched, upright growth form.

Similar Dalea species are lower growing and more prostrate and sprawling.

Special Characteristics

Butterfly Plant – The flowers attract butterflies, and the plants are larval food plants for several species of butterfly.

Classification

Kingdom: Plantae – Plants
Subkingdom: Tracheobionta – Vascular plants
Superdivision: Spermatophyta – Seed plants
Division: Magnoliophyta – Flowering plants
Class: Magnoliopsida – Dicotyledons
Subclass: Rosidae
Order: Fabales
Family: Fabaceae – Pea family
Genus: Dalea L. – prairie clover
Species: Dalea pulchra Gentry – Santa Catalina prairie clover

More About This Plant

Arizona County Distribution Map
Santa Catalina Prairie Clover (Dalea pulchra) – The Firefly Forest