Luuk Clark is a Prairie Steward and Pinnated Grouse advocate. He thanks Laura Walters of the Tallgrass Prairie Center and John Pearson of the Iowa DNR for helping him find a nearby location to photograph Silky prairie clover for this post.

Silky prairie clover (Dalea villosa) is a bit of a nomadic species relying on sandy, sparsely vegetated places. In Iowa it may be mainly associated with ancient post-glaciated delta systems and watersheds surrounding the Cedar River. 

My first time seeing it in Iowa was on a sandy “blowout” further east than the current range indicates. This does not surprise me as the changing of the natural landscape in Iowa has extirpated a plethora of our native species, and thus, our knowledge of where things historically could be found are lost with the upturned soil and disappearance of the prairie that gives Iowa its rich heritage. Its historic presence in Iowa was always considered “infrequent” even in earliest records, such as Wesley Greene’s 1907 book Plants of Iowa: A Preliminary List of the Native and Introduced Plants of the State, Not under Cultivation.