This rounded 3–4 feet tall and wide shrub with cooked branching and hairless, glandular foliage can be covered with clusters of brilliant magenta and white, pea-like flowers. Note the pods do not develop feathery tails. Cultivars, such as Sierra negra™, are often used in SW xeric and pollinator landscapes.

FLOWERS: August–November. Rounded to elongated, dense to loose clusters have bicolored flowers, each with a white and purple upright banner petal, 2 purple side petals, 2 fused purple keel petals. Sepals (calyx) mostly hairless with glandular dots between 10 pronounced ribs, and no feathery filaments on the tips of the lobes. Seed pod egg-shaped, hairless.

LEAVES: Alternate, deciduous. Blade odd-pinnately compound, 3/8–3/4 inch long (10—20 mm), with 9–19 leaflets, each oval, 1/16–3/16 inch long (2–4 mm); surfaces hairless above, gland-dotted below.

HABITAT: Coarse gravelly soils, rocky hills, flats, roadsides, disturbed areas; desert grasslands and scrub, pinyon-juniper woodlands, ponderosa pine forests.

ELEVATION: 4,800–7,500 feet.

RANGE: NM, OK, TX.

SIMILAR SPECIES: Feather Dalea, D. formosa, widespread, has filament-like feathery calyx lobes that develop with the flower.

NM COUNTIES: Southern NM at low- to mid-elevations in dry habitats: Chaves, Eddy, Grant, Lincoln, Otero, Quay, Sandoval, Socorro, Valencia.