The plant gets its colloquial name from the gray appearance caused by fine hairs which cover the leaves stems and unopened flowers. Flowering spikes are crowded at the top of the stems. Each spike produces nearly a hundred tiny flowers. Leaves are composed of about twenty pairs of oval leaflets. The thick taproot of this perennial plant penetrates deep underground.
Leadplant is fairly common on most native prairies in eastern North Dakota.
The plant seems to reach best development on east- and southfacing slopes. Leadplant is good livestock forage as indicated by a two to tenfold reduction in coverage of the plant on heavily grazed pastures as compared to those moderately or lightly grazed. When long-idle native prairie dominated by introduced grasses is burned in the spring, leadplant and other native plants usually show a remarkable recovery. Leadplant was first described by German botanist Frederick Pursh in 1814.