Galt Museum & Archives

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Two-Grooved Milk-Vetch

Ethnobotany

No ethnobotanical use of this plant is recorded.

Botany

This many stemmed plant may grow to 60 cm in height with several stalks per stem. The deep purple-blue flowers form a dense, narrow and blunt-topped mass at the top of each stem. The common name refers to the smooth seed pod that has two grooves on its top. This is one of the milk-vetches that contains a toxic alkaloid, and accumulates selenium when it grows in alkali soil. It can be fatally poisonous to livestock that eat it.

This plant is not currently in the garden, but we hope it is coming soon.