Prairie False Indigo

Prairie False Indigo: Baptisia Leucantha T. & G.

Other common names:

• Large White Wild Indigo

• Atlantic Wild Indigo

• White False Indigo

Baptisia: from the Greek, meaning “to dye,” referring to use of some species as a poor-quality indigo dye.

Leucantha: meaning “white-flowered”

Legume Family: Fabaceae (Leguminosae)

Found throughout the tallgrass prairie on rich, sometimes wet, prairie soils. Blooms May to June.

This 2- to 5- foot high, stout, upright, gray-green perennial has smooth stems and succulent, ascending branches. The leaves are alternate and have small, sharp stipules. There are three leaflets per leaf. Each leaflet, 1 to 2 inches long and ½ inch to 1 inch wide, is widely rounded at the end and narrow at the base. The leaves turn black on drying.

The 1-inch long white flowers occur on a terminal, upright raceme (open spike) that may be up to 1 foot or more long. The flowers are similar to pea flowers.

The blackish pods, which tend to droop, are about ¾ inch long. They are connected to the calyx by a relatively long stalk.

In the early stage of growth, prairie false indigo resembles asparagus, but it is poisonous and should not be eaten. The entire plant, green or dried in hay, is poisonous to horses and cattle.

B. leucantha, which contains alkaloids, was included in early lists of medicinal plants. Boiled roots were used to treat chronic colds. Some early settlers made a decoration of the root to treat scarlet fever, typhus, and epidemic dysentery.

It served as an emetic, a cathartic, and a coloring agent. B. tinctoria was probably also used.

The Meskwaki used prairie false indigo as a cure for sores that were slow to heal, as an emetic, and as a treatment for eczema. It was combined with sycamore bark as a medicine for axe or knife wounds and combined with senega snakeroot (Polygala senega) for snakebite.

Some plains Indians used a decoration of the leaves as a stimulant; they also applied it to cuts and wounds.

This species was regarded by some beekeepers as a source of a light amber honey with a characteristic flavor. Children once used its dry pods as toy rattles. In colonial times it served as a dye, but it was less satisfactory than true indigo.

Another species, B. tinctoria, is called horsefly weed because of the custom of trying a bunch of it to a horse’s harness to repel flies

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