238 LEGUMINOSAE (PULSE FAMILY) 
growing season. Small areas should be hand-pulled or grubbed out 
while in early bloom. 
HOARY PEA 
Tephrosia virginiana, Pers. 
(Crdcca virginiana, 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 
Fic. 170.—H cary Pea (Te- Tacemes; each blossom is nearly an 
phrosia virginiana). Xi. inch long, with hairy, five-lobed calyx, 
