The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Dalea candida
Also called White Dalea, White Tassel Flower
White prairie clover is a native North American perennial legume with dense white flower spikes, grown for pollinators and as a nitrogen-fixing prairie plant. It thrives in full sun and well-drained soil, and once established it tolerates drought.
Dalea candida is a species of flowering plant in the legume family known by the common name white prairie clover. It is native to North America, where it can be found throughout central Canada, the central United States, and northern Mexico. It can sometimes be found outside its range as an introduced species. It grows in many types of habitats, including several types of prairie, foothills, woods, forests, and disturbed areas.
It is a perennial herb growing erect to a maximum height around 1 meter (3 ft 3 in), its taproot growing up to 5 or 6 feet (1.5 or 1.8 m) deep. The alternately arranged leaves are each composed of several narrow, gland-dotted, light green leaflets. The inflorescence is a dense cylindrical spike of flowers at the tip of each stem or stem branch.
It is popular with pollinators and, as it is a legume, it is a nitrogen fixer. It is classified by the USDA as a "high" nitrogen fixer, a category few native plants fit into. It is a larval host to the clouded sulphur, marine blue, Reakirt's blue, and southern dogface.
Among the Ramah Navajo, the candida variety is used for stomachache and as a "life medicine", especially for fever. A compound decoction is used to treat "snake infection" in sheep.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Dalea candida by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
