Dalea jamesii(Torr.) Torr. & A.Gray

James' prairie clover

WFO wfo-0000169079 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Dalea jamesii, photographed by Andrew Tree
fig. a Andrew Tree, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-02 / obs. 193919139
Dalea jamesii, photographed by Andrew Tree
fig. b Andrew Tree, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193918978
Dalea jamesii, photographed by Andrew Tree
fig. c Andrew Tree, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192439657
Dalea jamesii, photographed by Andrew Tree
fig. d Andrew Tree, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190200188
Dalea jamesii, photographed by Andrew Tree
fig. e Andrew Tree, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190200140
Dalea jamesii, photographed by Andrew Tree
fig. f Andrew Tree, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190200161
Dalea jamesii, photographed by Andrew Tree
fig. g Andrew Tree, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189757242
Dalea jamesii, photographed by Andrew Tree
fig. h Andrew Tree, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189757191

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 6 botanical countries

Regions where Dalea jamesii is native: Arizona, Colorado, Mexico Northeast, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas ArizonaColoradoMexico NortheastNew MexicoOklahomaTexas
Native distribution of Dalea jamesii, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Arizona ARI NORTHERN AMERICA
Colorado COL
Mexico Northeast MXE
New Mexico NWM
Oklahoma OKL
Texas TEX

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 225 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -6.5 °C -2.5 °C 1.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 28.4 °C 32.1 °C 33.6 °C
Annual rainfall 321 mm 415 mm 509 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 32 mm 45 mm 60 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 225 research-grade observations of Dalea jamesii that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 4 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Jamesia obovata Raf.
  • Parosela jamesii (Torr.) Vail
  • Parosela porteri A.Nelson
  • Psoralea jamesii Torr.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.