Fine Looking Legume

Meet Desmodium canadense - a flowering plant in the legume (pea) family that is commonly known as showy tick trefoil, Canadian tick-trefoil, and Canada tickclover.  

This plant ranges from southern Canada to Nova Scotia, New England and south to Virginia; west to Oklahoma and Missouri. You will typically find it growing in woods, prairies, and roadside ditches. It is growing in our prairie planting and with no recollection of it being in the original seed mix we planted almost two dozen years ago it had to arrive here by other means. 

It produces very distinctively-jointed seed pods that break into individual segments that stick to your clothes and the dogs in the fall. It is Ma Nature’s way of seed dispersal and likely how it originally found its way here to take-up residence.