Canada Tick Trefoil, Desmodium canadense L., Native Minnesota Wildflower plant, Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden

	Plants of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden
	Common Name	Scientific Name	Plant Family	Garden Location	Prime Season
	Showy Tick-trefoil	Desmodium canadense (L.) DC.	Pea (Fabaceae)	Upland	Late Summer
Other names and notes	(Canada Tick-trefoil). Like most Tick-trefoils, this one has rose-purple flowers; these are 5-parted and stalked ; they are in a dense, branched cluster of several racemes with small leaf-like bracts under. The erect stem reaching from 2 to 6 feet in height. The flat seed pods have 3 to 5 jointed triangular segments and are sticky and slightly curved, with barbed hairs to catch fur and clothing. Leaves are alternate up the stem, 3-parted and on stalks. The Garden's other Tick-trefoil, the Pointed-leaved, has a whorl of leaves at the base and very loose flower racemes. The genus name, is from the Greek meaning a "chain" and refers to the shape of the seed pods.



Flowers above and right from late July into early August, seed pods (above) of mid-August.

Above: The three-part leaves on the stem.

Eloise Butler wrote of the Tick-trefoils: "You will know them by the scalloped pea-pods, covered with small barbed grapplers. When you pull them off, the scallops separate, each one having a single seed. The tick trefoils have, as the name implies, compound leaves made up of three leaflets. The blossoms are bright purplish pink, clustered in long racemes." Published Aug. 20, 1911, Minneapolis Sunday Tribune.

Notes: This plant is indigenous to the Garden area. Eloise Butler catalogued it on Sept. 7, 1907. It is native to most of Minnesota except counties in the far north and a few counties in west-central.

Return to The Friends of the Wild Flower Garden Site Plan/Archive

References: Plant characteristics are generally from sources 15, 16, 30, 31, 33, W2 & W3. Distribution principally from W2 and also 31, 34 and W1. Planting history generally from 1, 4 & 4a. Other sources by specific reference. See Reference List for details.

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