Pointed-leaf Tick Trefoil, Desmodium glutinosum (Muhl. ex Willd.), 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
	Pointed-leaved Tick Trefoil	Desmodium glutinosum (Muhl. ex Willd.)	Pea (Fabaceae )	Upland	Early Summer to Late Summer
Other names and notes	Purplish-rose small irregular 5-parted flowers in a branched open panicle on a tall unbranched stem 1 to 4 feet high, rising above a whorl of leaves at the base. Leaves have three leaflets with the center leaflet having a sharp pointed tip; leaflets are broadly oval. The flat seed pods have 2 or 3 jointed triangular segments and are sticky and slightly curved, with barbed hairs to catch fur and clothing. The Garden's other Tick-trefoil, the Canada, or Showy Tick-trefoil has alternate leaves up the stem and a much tighter panicle branching.


Flowers of August	Early flower of early July	The center leaflet of the 3-part leaf.

Below: Detail of flowers - early July	Below: A three-leaflet stem leaf

Notes: This plant is indigenous to the Garden area. Eloise Butler catalogued it on Sept. 6, 1907. This plant is native in Minnesota in a wide band running from the SE corner to the NW, absent in the SW, the far North and the Arrowhead. This is less distribution then that of the Showy Tick-trefoil.

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.

Return to -- Site Plan/Archive --or-- List of Common Plant Names -- or -- List of Scientific Names -- or --Home Page

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.

070711