LEGUMINOSAE (PULSE FAMILY) 253 
TRAILING WILD BEAN 
Strophostyles hélvola, Britton 
Native. Annual. Propagates. by seeds. 
Time of bloom: June to September. 
Seed-time: July to October. 
Range: Atlantic States from Massachusetts to Florida; along the 
Great Lakes from Quebec to Minnesota, and southward through 
the Mississippi Valley to the Gulf of Mexico and Texas. 
Habitat: Sandy fields; shores of lakes and streams. 
Usually this plant is prostrate, trailing or twining to a length of 
three to eight feet, branching at the base, and with leaves at some- 
what distant intervals; but occasion- 
ally it will have a stouter, more leafy 
stalk, held erect and less than two 
feet tall; in either form rough, with 
downward-pointing hairs. The plants 
are said to be very nutritious and are 
much liked by grazing cattle, but in 
cultivated fields they are often rather 
troublesome. 
sLeaves pinnately trifoliolate with 
slender petioles and very small, narrow, 
pointed stipules; leaflets one to three 
inches in length, rather long ovate, 
the lateral ones often obtusely lobed 
on the outer sides and the terminal one 
on both sides, or the upper leaves may 
have entire leaflets and the lower ones 
be distinctly three-lobed. Flowers axil- 
lary, lifted on long, slender peduncles 
in dense capitate clusters of three to 
ten pale purple blossoms, fading to a 
greenish color, the keels curved and 
slender, the standards rounded and 
about a half-inch wide. Pods round, 
slender, sessile, nearly smooth, tipped 
Fic. 179. — Trailing Wild Bean 
(Strophostyles helvola). X 4. 
with the persistent bent style, four- to eight-seeded, the beans 
downy. (Fig. 179.) 
