238 LEGUMINOSAE (PULSE FAMILY) 



growing season. Small areas should be hand-pulled or grubbed out 

 while in early bloom. 



HOARY PEA 



Tephrosia virginidna, Pers. 

 (Crdcca virginidna, L.) 



Other English names: Wild Sweet Pea, Turkey Pea, Goat's Rue, 



Catgut, Devil's Shoe-strings. 

 Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds and by slender, creeping 



rootstocks. 



Time of bloom : June to July. 

 Seed-time: August to September. 

 Range: Ontario to Manitoba, southward to Florida, Texas, and 



Mexico. 

 Habitat: Dry upland meadows, pastures, and woodland borders. 



It is fortunate that this plant has a preference for dry, sandy, and 

 sterile soil, for the long, slender, and very tough rootstocks, which 

 have given it the common names of 

 Catgut and Devil's Shoe-strings, cause 

 it to grow in large clumps or patches 

 and make it very difficult to extermi- 

 nate where it is well established. (Fig. 

 170.) 



Stems erect, tufted, simple, ridged, 

 hard and woody at the base, one to 

 two feet high, leafy to the top. The 

 whole plant is covered with soft, silky, 

 whitish hairs, especially when young, 

 making the foliage ashen-gray or hoary. 

 Leaves alternate, odd-pinnate, with 

 seventeen to twenty-nine narrowly 

 oblong, entire leaflets, about an inch in 

 length, the midrib of each projecting 

 slightly as a minute bristle at the tip. 

 At night the leaves take a position as 

 for slumber, turning on their bases 

 and folding themselves along the stem. 

 Flowers in short, crowded, terminal 

 FIG. 170. -Hoary Pea (Te- raceme s 5 each blossom is nearly an 

 phrosia mrginiana). x i. inch long, with hairy, five-lobed calyx, 



