Leadplant

Amorpha canescens

This plant may reach forty inches in height but usually is about a foot and a half tall in our area. The plant gets its colloquial name from the gray appearance caused by fine hairs which cover the leaves stems and unopened flowers. Flowering spikes are crowded at the top of the stems. Each spike produces nearly a hundred tiny flowers. Leaves are composed of about twenty pairs of oval leaflets. The thick taproot of this perennial plant penetrates deep underground. At maturity the seedpods (legumes) are about three-sixteenths of an inch long.