Dalea villosa(Nutt.) Spreng.

silky prairie clover

WFO wfo-0000170207 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Dalea villosa, photographed by Jeff D Hansen
fig. a Jeff D Hansen, CC BY 4.0 / 2020-07-19 / obs. 85324671
Dalea villosa, photographed by Marilynn Miller
fig. b Marilynn Miller, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 57080745
Dalea villosa, photographed by Chris Friesen
fig. c Chris Friesen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 8566938
Dalea villosa, photographed by Marilynn Miller
fig. d Marilynn Miller, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 73958785
Dalea villosa, photographed by Jared Shorma
fig. e Jared Shorma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 166877872
Dalea villosa, photographed by Shaan Aroeste
fig. f Shaan Aroeste, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 148431877
Dalea villosa, photographed by Rose Zappa
fig. g Rose Zappa, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 88774579
Dalea villosa, photographed by Rose Zappa
fig. h Rose Zappa, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 84912995

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 19 botanical countries

Regions where Dalea villosa is native: Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Manitoba, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Saskatchewan, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin ArkansasColoradoIowaKansasLouisianaManitobaMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNew MexicoNorth DakotaOklahomaSaskatchewanSouth DakotaTexasWisconsin
Native distribution of Dalea villosa, 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
Arkansas ARK NORTHERN AMERICA
Colorado COL
Iowa IOW
Kansas KAN
Louisiana LOU
Manitoba MAN
Michigan MIC
Minnesota MIN
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
Montana MNT
Nebraska NEB
New Mexico NWM
North Dakota NDA
Oklahoma OKL
Saskatchewan SAS
South Dakota SDA
Texas TEX
Wisconsin WIS

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.

Flowering 77 in flower of 128 examined

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Dalea villosa observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 77 of 128 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 563 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -18.9 °C -13.2 °C -1.9 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 25.3 °C 27.9 °C 33.6 °C
Annual rainfall 451 mm 786 mm 870 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 34 mm 66 mm 84 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 563 research-grade observations of Dalea villosa 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 7 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.

  • Dalea grisea (Torr. & A.Gray) Shinners
  • Kuhnistera grisea (Torr. & A.Gray) Kuntze
  • Kuhnistera villosa (Nutt.) Kuntze
  • Petalostemon griseum Torr. & A.Gray
  • Petalostemon griseus Torr. & A.Gray
  • Petalostemon villosum Nutt.
  • Petalostemon villosus Nutt.

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.