Dwarf Wild Indigo

Dwarf Wild Indigo is the shorter, more drought-tolerant Great Plains counterpart to Wild Blue Indigo (Baptisia australis) — botanically a variety of the same species, distinguished mainly by size. Where the typical form reaches three to five feet, this one tops out at one to two feet, but the flowers are just as large: erect spikes of blue-to-violet, pea-shaped blooms in mid-spring, held well above a low mound of blue-green, three-part foliage.

It's native to the drier prairies and rocky open woodlands of the central Great Plains — Iowa and Nebraska south through Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and northern Texas — and it shares the deep, woody taproot of its taller relative, which makes it extremely drought tolerant once established but slow to settle in and impossible to move once it has. Give it full sun and sharp drainage; rich, damp soil produces lax, floppy growth and fewer flowers than the lean conditions it evolved for. Like other Baptisia, its roots fix nitrogen, gradually improving the soil around it, and a planting can live for decades with essentially no maintenance.

Its compact size makes it a better fit than the species for smaller borders and rock gardens, and like its relatives it hosts the wild indigo duskywing butterfly and is largely left alone by deer and rabbits, thanks to the same bitter alkaloids that make the foliage unpalatable to grazers.