ATTRA Publications on Sustainable Agriculture Butterfly Pea: A Cover Crop for Hot and Humid Areas

Butterfly Pea: A Cover Crop for Hot and Humid Areas – ATTRA – Sustainable Agriculture

Butterfly peas (Clitoria ternatea) are known for their showy flowers, but their twining, delicate-stemmed growth habit also makes them a great cover crop candidate. They have pinnate leaves with five to seven delicate leaflets. Their seed pods are relatively flat and narrow, with papery shells that shatter easily and can eject seeds with some force. The butterfly pea is a perennial vine that is intolerant of freezing weather, so it needs to be protected in the subtropics or treated as an annual.

Butterfly peas originated in Africa but have spread through cultivation through much of both the tropical and subtropical regions. There are several synonyms for Clitoria ternatea, such as Clitoria albiflora, C. bracteata, C. mearnsii, C. tanganicensis, and C. zanzibarensis, but the literature has mostly settled on the first term. There has been little in the way of cultivar development but, luckily, butterfly pea is already naturally widely adapted (Staples, 1992).