Hoary Pea
Tephrosia onobrychoides, commonly called multi-bloom hoary pea,[2] is a species of plant in the pea family that is native to Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Alabama in the United States of America.[3]
hoary pea
Butterfly: Wingspan: 1 - 1 inches (3.8 - 4.4 cm). The upperside of both wings has a ground color of dark brown. The central portion of the forewing is crossed by a band formed by 4 or 5 translucent, squarish, golden spots. The outer margin of the hindwing is checkered, but mainly white. The underside of the hindwing has a very diagnostic color pattern: it is banded with black and brown at the base while the outer one-half of the wing is heavily frosted (hoary) with white.This distinguishes it from the simiilar Silver-spotted Skipper.
The South Florida conservation team is proud to announce another 200 endangered plants have been relocatedand are flourishing in a South Florida pine rockland.Tephrosia angustissima var. corallicola, commonly known as the hoary pea,previously had only one confirmed location in the world, but now it has two.This state-listed endangered species had the misfortune of finding itself in an agricultural area,where mowing and other agricultural practices slowed down its reproduction and hindered it from reaching new locations in the fragmented habitat.
This situation greatly concerned the Garden's conservation team, so we decided to take action.Starting in the winter of 2002, we began taking cuttings from the wild population to create a duplicate populationthat would be planted in a pine rockland fragment a few blocks away.Over the winter and spring months, Assistant Conservation Horticulturist Karen Griffin propagated and grewmore than 1,000 cuttings at the Garden's nursery in preparation for June's out-planting.Of those cuttings, 150 made it first through the rigorous propagation processand then through the grueling selection process during which we chose the very best and healthiest plants for our experiment.The word "experiment" is not a mistake.With the only known wild population of Tephrosia growing in an area disturbed by rock plows and agriculture,the microhabitat this endangered plant prefers is unknown.Experimentation is necessary to determine the best place to plant the hoary pea.We do know it thrives in pine rockland soils, so we started by selecting a nearby pine rockland as the location for our experiment. 041b061a72