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

General Landscape Uses: Primarily recommended for natural landscapes and habitat restorations.

Availability: Grown by enthusiasts.

Description: Small creeping herb.

Dimensions: About 3-6 inches tall. Spreading and forming small open patches broader than tall.

Growth Rate: Moderate.

Range: Monroe County Keys and Miami-Dade County; West Indies, Mexico and Guatemala. In the Monroe County Keys, disjunct from Miami-Dade County to the pine rocklands of Big Pine Key.

 Map of select IRC data from peninsular Florida.

 Map of ZIP codes with habitat recommendations from the Monroe County Keys north to Martin and Charlotte counties.

Habitats: Marl prairies and pine rocklands.

Soils: Moist to seasonally wet, moderately well-drained marl soils, without humus.

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

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

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

Drought Tolerance: Low; requires moist to wet soils and is intolerant of long periods of drought.

Light Requirements: Full sun.

Flower Color: Yellow.

Flower Characteristics: Semi-showy.

Flowering Season: All year.

Fruit: Jointed pod (legume), with 1 fertile seed and a hooked tip.

Wildlife and Ecology: Larval host plant for barred yellow (Eurema daira) butterflies.

Horticultural Notes: Can be grown from seed.

References: Hammer 2004

Comments: It is listed as endangered by the state of Florida. For more information, visit our Floristic Inventory of South Florida Database Online. See also Florida Natural Areas Inventory's Field Guide to the Rare Plants of Florida page (Chafin 2000).