Natives For Your Neighborhood
Conservation of rare plants, animals, and ecosystems

General Landscape Uses: Primarily recommended for natural landscapes and habitat restorations. Also wildflower and butterfly gardens.

Availability: Grown by enthusiasts.

Description: Small herbaceous wildflower.

Dimensions: About 2-3 inches in height. Mostly creeping along the ground and forming open mats; sometimes weakly twining up other vegetation.

Growth Rate: Moderate.

Range: Eastern and southeastern United States south to Miami-Dade and Collier counties.

 Map of select IRC data from peninsular Florida.

Habitats: Pinelands and scrub.

Soils: Moist to dry, well-drained sandy soils, without humus.

Nutritional Requirements: Low; it grows in nutrient poor soils.

Salt Water Tolerance: Low; does not tolerate long-term flooding by salt or brackish water.

Salt Wind Tolerance: Low; salt wind may burn the leaves.

Drought Tolerance: High; does not require any supplemental water once established.

Light Requirements: Full sun.

Flower Color: Pink.

Flower Characteristics: Semi-showy.

Flowering Season: All year.

Fruit: Small brown pod (legume).

Wildlife and Ecology: Larval host plant for cassius blue (Leptotes cassius), ceraunus blue (Hemiargus ceraunus), gray hairstreak (Strymon melinus), long-tailed skipper (Urbanus proteus), northern cloudywing (Thorybes pylades), silver spotted skipper (Epargyreus clarus) and zarucco dusky wing (Erynnis zarucco) butterflies.

Horticultural Notes: Can be grown from seed.