Drummond's Milkvetch

Astragalus drummondii

Hosts 2 caterpillarsPollinator plantNitrogen fixer

Growing it

When	Flowers May to July; fruits July to September
Type	wildflower
Sun	Full sun
Water	Low
Soil	pH 6.5–8.5
Hardiness	zone 3–7
Mature height	0.6 m
Mature spread	0.75 m
Spacing	0.5 m
Years to maturity	4
Bloom	May–Jul
Flower colour	White read from a published flora
In bloom	May June July
Fruit	Jul–Sep
Native to	AB, SK

feather-compound leaves about 10 cm long

Where it has been recorded

BothSpecimensObservations

58 squares of about 28 km, each holding at least one record. A square is not a claim that the plant grows throughout it, and an unshaded square is unrecorded rather than empty. Darker squares hold more records, which follows roads and towns as much as it follows the plant. 7 herbarium specimens and 154 field observations this project may redraw. A filled dot is a pressed sheet somebody can re-examine; a hollow ring is a photograph identified by community agreement. Where the dots are dense is where people have looked, not where the plant is commonest, and empty ground is unsurveyed rather than unoccupied. How this map is made.

Which ecoregions the records fall in

Fescue Grassland south AB: 424 records, high confidence
Mixed Grassland south AB / SK: 217 records, high confidence
Moist Mixed Grassland south AB / SK: 79 records, high confidence
Aspen Parkland central AB / SK: 15 records, medium confidence
Cypress Upland south AB / SK: 14 records, medium confidence
Northern Continental Divide south AB: 6 records, low confidence

These are counts of records collected somewhere in the region, which is the resolution of the evidence: the map above shows where inside it. A region with 3 records is not the same claim as one with three hundred, so the count travels with the region. A region missing from this list means nobody has recorded it there, which is not the same as the plant being absent. Records within 900 m of a border count for neither side, because the border is not drawn finely enough to say which one they are on. Source: GBIF occurrence search + PRESERVED_SPECIMEN pass, retrieved 2026-08-24. Boundaries digitised from the National Ecological Framework for Canada v2.2 (Ecological Stratification Working Group 1995), simplified to about 900 m for display: an outline is accurate to roughly a kilometre, not to the metre. How these counts are made.

See every observation, live and current, on GBIF or iNaturalist.

Documented animals

14 documented relationships.

pollen for

Andrena vicina Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Black-tailed Bumble Bee Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Central Bumble Bee Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Golden Northern Bumble Bee Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Hoplitis albifrons Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Hunt's Bumble Bee Clements & F. L. Long 1923
Megachile melanophaea Clements & F. L. Long 1923

nectar for

Central Bumble Bee Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Golden Northern Bumble Bee Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Hunt's Bumble Bee Specimen records from iNaturalist.org
Megachile frigida LaManna et al. 2020
Nevada Bumble Bee Specimen records from iNaturalist.org

caterpillar host for

Silvery Blue Acorn & Sheldon 2006
Western Tailed-Blue Acorn & Sheldon 2006

Also worth knowing

Safety

Low toxicity to pets

Buying it

About $8–$16 per plant (estimate), usually from a native-plant nursery. Estimate (herb default); AB retail as of 2026

Where these numbers came from

Flower detail: not verified, a genus-level estimate