ALL PREORDER SPECIES ARE STILL GROWING IN OUR GREENHOUSE - Please note all orders containing preorder species will be held until all plants in your order are ready to pickup or ship. If you would like available plants sooner please make two separate orders.
Light
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Full, Partial
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Moisture
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Medium-Wet to Dry
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Bloom
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Early-Summer
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Color
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White
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Height
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4 FT
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Wild white indigo is a stunning, long-lived, shrub-like perennial in the pea family. It takes up to four years to reach maturity, but once it does it is very hardy and grows quickly each year, sending up its purple sprouts early in the spring and reaching its full size of four feet by June. It has alternate, bluish, three-part leaves and long flowering spikes of white pea flowers that form contrast against the gray flowering stem they cling to. The flowers are scentless but are visited by a number of pollinators, especially bumblebees. Its leaves host quite a few moth and butterfly larvae including the Black-Spotted Prominent, Wild Indigo Duskywing, Frosted Elfin, Hoary Edge, Southern Dogface, Orange Sulphur, Clouded Sulphur, and Eastern Tailed-Blue. Though the foliage is loved by caterpillars, it is toxic to mammals and thus provides the plant protection from deer and other herbivores.
Wild white indigo produces beautiful dark seed pods in the fall, and the whole plant turns black after the first frost, providing sustained seasonal interest. Eventually the spent stem will crack and be carried away by wind like a tumbleweed, aiding the plant in distributing its seeds. Wild white indigo has a very deep taproot, protecting it from drought, though it can tolerate moist soils as well. As a legume, it fixes nitrogen into the soil, providing a service to its garden neighbors.
