Description
Botanical Name: Baptisia alba
Common Name: White Wild Indigo, White Baptisia
Description: This beautiful Florida native perennial wildflower likes a sun, part sun, part shade area in your garden. It quickly grows to 2-4′ tall and wide. Its showy white flowers bloom in the spring on erect, terminal racemes that extend a foot or more above the foliage and remain for several weeks. A single plant may produce several flower stalks. Leaves are compound, alternately arranged, and comprised of three bluish-green, elliptic to ovate leaflets. Young seed pods are green and turn grayish-black as they mature. They often appear inflated. Drought tolerant once established.
White wild indigo occurs naturally in pine flatwoods and along riverbanks and deciduous forest edges. It attracts many pollinators and is the larval host plant for the Wild indigo Duskywing and Zarucco Duskywing butterflies. The fruits are eaten by a variety of birds. Deer and rabbits browse the foliage, and as a legume it provides nutritious, protein-rich food for them. The plant’s large tuberous roots allow it to withstand the browsing. Its roots have nitrogen-fixing nodules on them, which makes it useful on nutrient poor soils. Has special value to native bees and bumble bees.
Grows in well drained clay, loam, or sandy soil that is acidic to neutral pH.
Is toxic to livestock and humans. Poison garden candidate!
Not salt tolerant of inundation by salty or brackish water. Low/no tolerance of salty wind or direct salt spray.
This plant in 1-gallon containers is 5-15″ tall.
This plant in 3-gallon containers is 1.5-3′ tall.
Plant Lore: Many species of Baptisia were historically used to produce a blue dye, hence the common name of the genus, indigo. The genus name Baptisia comes from the Greek word bapto meaning “to dye.” Specific epithet means white.
Hardiness Zones 5 – 9
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.