posted 11 years ago
I am looking for Sonoran Desert specific plants to fix nitrogen, but there's only a few ever listed on most places, like mesquite, palo verde, and ironwood for trees, and Bird's of paradise and fairy dusters for bushes, and lupines for flowers. I'm slowly building a list of more legumes to fill in the gap, but the question I had was: do ALL legumes help fix nitrogen? If I simply create a list of all the native legumes I can find, will all of these be useful as nitrogen fixers?
Is there any way to tell which plants are better nitrogen fixers? Observation, certain types of soil in areas where they grow, or more plant life, anything like that? I saw the USDA link one a post here, where they will list a plants nitrogen fixing ability, but for most of the plants I'm looking at, the USDA doesn't have that information yet.
And for non-leguminous plants that fix nitrogen, any characteristics that help find these? Any particular plant families where it's more common to find these? Maybe these are more likely to be listed as 'nurse plants?'
Thanks!