Hedysarum mongolicum seed

LATIN NAME: Hedysarum mongolicum

COMMON NAME: Mongolian Sweetvetch

The Mongolian sweetvetch is a handsome, low, spreading, much-branched, perennial herb of the dry, sunny places, and its fine, pinnate leaves of the many oval leaflets and its fine, upright or arching spikes of the many small, pink, purple or rose, pea-like flowers, followed by the small, jointed, flat pods, have made it a treasured and fine plant of the region. It grows as a low, spreading, much-branched, perennial herb, reaching up to sixty centimetres or so, with the many slender, branching stems bearing the alternate, pinnate leaves of the many oval, pointed leaflets and, through the summer, the fine, upright or arching spikes of the many small, pink, purple or rose, pea-like flowers, followed by the small, jointed, flat pods of the few hard seeds. It is a species of the flowering herb in the pea family, and it is native to the dry, sunny places of the central and eastern Asia, while it is treasured for its fine, tough, soil-building form, and it is known as the Mongolian sweetvetch.

In the pea family it is the pink-spiked, nitrogen-fixing sweetvetch of the dry steppe, a plant that holds the loose ground and feeds the soil as it flowers.

Scientific Research & Plant Biotechnology

The Mongolian sweetvetch holds a recognised place in the steppe-ecology papers of the central Asia, and the soil scientists have studied both the nitrogen-fixing partnership of its roots and the deep, binding roots that hold the loose, dry ground. The botanists have mapped its place in the pea family and the dry flora of the region, and the growers of the reclamation and the dry garden keep it in their catalogues.

Ecological & Economic Value & Wide Applications

In the dry garden, the Mongolian sweetvetch is the pink-spiked plant that feeds the ground. Its spikes of the small flowers feed the bees, its flat pods feed the birds, and the low, spreading, tough growth holds the dry slope. It has served the pasture, the reclamation and the dry garden, and it grows well in the sandy, well-drained ground of the sunny, open spot. Pink-flowered, soil-building and drought-hardy.

Drop the hard seeds into a cup of warm water and leave them to soak for a day, then sow them at a shallow depth in pots of sandy, free-draining soil, keep the pots in a bright, open spot and water them regularly, and the first shoots will come up in their own good time.