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Desmanthus illinoensis
Wildflowers of Texas [a field guide]
ILLINOIS BUNDLEFLOWER (Desmanthus illinoensis) Legume Family (Fabaceae): BLOOM PERIOD: June-September. DESCRIPTION: Stiffly upright to spreading bushy perennial 12-40 inches (3-10 decimeters) high stems striped, solitary or several from woody base. FLOWER minute, white, creamy or greenish; petals 5; stamens 5, conspicuously protruding. Flowers numerous and congested in ball-like cluster; clusters 1/2 - 1 inch (13-23 mm) across, on long stalks from leaf axils. LEAVES 2-4 inches (15-10 cm) long, twice divided into 20-30 pairs of small leaflets; ultimate leaflets narrow, about 1/8 inch (3 mm) long. HABITAT: Clay or calcareous soils of prairies, plains, riverbanks and shell deposits. In all except southern Texas. NOTE: The interesting fruit of Illinois bundleflower is a round, dense, rough cluster of curved pods, each pod about 1 - 1 1/2 inches (25-38 mm) long. These clusters are much sought for use in dried arrangements. High in protein, this plant is considered one of our most important native legumes for livestock and wildlife. Readily eaten by them, it is an excellent range-condition indicator.
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Vascular Flora of the Southeastern United States; Vol 3 Part 2 Leguminosae (Fabaceae).
QK125.V37 v.3 pt.2.
(Mimosoideae: genera identification key & illustration)
BAILEY
Desmanthus
Standard Encyclopedia of Horticulture; Vol 2 (1914) R635.9
DESMANTHUS (name refers to flowers being in bundles). Synonymous with Acuan. Leguminosae. About 10 herbs or shrubs in subtropical North America and 1 in the tropics of the Old World, a few of the American species reaching well north in the U.S., probably not regularly cultivated, but now and then transferred to the garden for the effect of their bipinnate leaves and small greenish white flowers, in axillary peduncled heads or spikes. The genus is one of the Mimosa tribe, and the flowers are not papilionaceous: petals 5, distinct or very nearly so; calyx bell-shaped, 5-toothed; stamens 5 or 10, distinct, usually exserted: pod flat, narrow, straight or curved, several-seeded. D. illinoensis, MacM. (Mimosa illinoensis, Michx. Acuan illinoensis, Kuntze), occurs in prairies and river borders from Indiana west and south: 1-5 ft. nearly glabrous, perennial erect herb: leaflets. 20-30 pairs, obtusish. D. leptolobus, Torr. & Grey, occurs on prairies from Kansas to Texas: leaflets. mostly fewer and acute, and peduncles much shorter (1 inch or less long).
EVERETT
Desmanthus
The New York Botanical Garden Illustrated Encyclopedia of Horticulture. rSB317.58
DESMANTHUS (Des-man'thus): Chiefly natives of tropical and subtropical America, but with some in North America, the thirty species of Desmanthus belong in the section of the pea family, LEGUMINOSAE, that includes the sensitive plant (Mimosa), the silk tree (Albizia), and Acacia. Accordingly, the flowers are not pea-like, but are in fuzzy heads or spikes, a characteristic accounted for in the name which comes from the Greek 'desme', a bundle, and 'anthos', a flower, and alludes to the heads of bloom. Of minor garden importance, the members of this genus are herbaceous, perennials and shrubs with twice-pinnate, mimosa-like foliage. The tiny white or greenish flowers, clustered in tight heads, have five-lobed calyxes, five petals, and five or ten usually much-protruding stamens. A hardy herbaceous perennial, D. ILLINOENSIS, is 3 to 6 feet tall and has conspicuously angled, hairless, or minutely hairy stems. Its leaves, 2 to 4 inches long, have six to twelve pairs of major divisions, each divided into twenty or thirty pairs of oblong leaflets up to 1/5 inch long and often hairy along their margins. The flower stalks, up to 1 1/4 inches long, terminate in solitary small heads of bloom, succeeded by short, strongly curved pods up to 1 inch long, in dense, nearly spherical heads. A succession of flowers is produced through the summer. This species ranges in the wild from Ohio to Colorado, Florida, Texas, and New Mexico. Very similar, but with more rigid seed pods up to 2 3/4 inches long, D. leptolobus is indigenous from Missouri to Kansas and Texas. GARDEN USES AND CULTIVATION: These plants have little to recommend them except for inclusion in collections of native plants and for occasional use in naturalistic plantings. They grow without difficulty in ordinary garden soil, moist or dry, in sunny places, and are raised from seed.
MOERMAN, DANIEL E
Desmanthus illinoensis
'Research Reports in Ethnobotany: Medicinal Plants of Native America vol.1&2'; University of Michigan of Anthropology, Technical Reports #19; QK99.N7 M64 (1986)
Desmanthus Illinoensis, Fabaceae: PAIUTE EYE MEDICINE. Five seeds placed in eye at night to cure trachoma; washed out in morning. PAWNEE DERMATOLOGICAL AID. Acuan illinoensis. Spider Bean. Decoction of leaves used as a wash to cure the itch.
TROPICOS Database at Texas A+M University: |