White Wild Indigo

Baptisia alba

White wild indigo stands apart from its better-known blue cousin with clean, upright spikes of white pea-flowers in late spring and early summer. The blooms rise above blue-green trifoliate foliage that stays handsome and structural all season -- this is a perennial with presence year-round, not just when it blooms. The inflated seed pods that follow are charcoal-black and dramatic, rattling with seeds through fall and winter. As a legume, it fixes nitrogen in the soil and feeds the ecology around it without any help. It's the host plant for several specialist hairstreak and skipper butterflies whose caterpillars can only survive on Baptisia. Slow to establish, but plants live for decades once rooted and grow substantially more impressive each year. Give it space from the start.