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Desmodium intortum
Also called Beggar Lice, Green Leaf Desmodium, Green Leaf Tick Trefoil
Greenleaf desmodium is a scrambling, sprawling perennial legume grown mainly as a fodder and cover crop in the tropics. It thrives in warm, reasonably moist conditions and is valued for fixing nitrogen in the soil.
Desmodium intortum, known as greenleaf desmodium and also as beggarlice along with other members of its genus, is a species of flowering plant in the genus Desmodium, native to Mexico, Central America, northern South America, the Galápagos, Haiti and Jamaica. A nitrogen-fixing fodder crop, it has been introduced to the rest of the world's tropics, including Africa, India, Australia, New Guinea and Taiwan.
Desmodium intortum is used in push–pull agricultural pest management since it contains potent secondary metabolites that are released into the soil and aerially. Inter-cropped in maize and sorghum fields, it repels Chilo partellus, a stem-boring grass moth, and suppresses witchweeds, including Asiatic witchweed (Striga asiatica) and purple witchweed (S. hermonthica).
Showy ticktrefoil · Zarzabacoa comun · Scorpion ticktrefoil · Dixie ticktrefoil · Spanish Tick Clover · Ticktrefoil
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Desmodium intortum 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.
