Acmispon argophyllus |
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California deervetch or trefoil, silver bird's-foot trefoil, silver lotus |
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Habit | Herbs, perennial, or subshrubs, cespitose and ± prostrate, or shrubby and spreading to ascending, low or robust, silvery or gray, 1–6(–10+) dm, not fleshy, tomentose to canescent or strigose; from woody caudices. | ||||||||||||||||
Stems | 1–20+, prostrate or decumbent to ascending, branched, herbaceous, slender, or ± woody, leafy, sometimes congested at tips. |
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Leaves | irregularly pinnate to subpalmate; stipules glandlike; short-petiolate; rachis 2–10 mm, ± flattened; leaflets (3 or)4 or 5(–7), blades obovate to elliptic-lanceolate or ovate, apex acute, surfaces densely sericeous. |
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Inflorescences | 3–20-flowered, capitate. |
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Peduncles | ascending, 0–6(–40) mm, shorter to longer than leaves; bract absent or unifoliolate, subtending umbel. |
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Flowers | 6–12 mm; calyx 5–7 mm, tube densely villous, lobes subulate, shorter than or equal to tube; corolla yellow to orange, turning red or brown, claws shorter than calyx tube, banner implicate-ascending, wings ± equaling keel; style curved, glabrous. |
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Legumes | persistent, included to moderately (–strongly) exserted, ascending to divergent, reddish brown, arched, turgid, not constricted, not septate, lanceoloid, 6–10 × 1–2 mm, leathery, apex short-beaked, tapering, curved or geniculate, indehiscent, smooth, margins keeled smooth, glabrate to silky. |
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Seeds | 1 (or 2), tawny, mottled, curved-oblong, elongate, smooth. |
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Acmispon argophyllus |
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Distribution | nw Mexico; California
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Discussion | Varieties 6 (5 in the flora). D. Isely (1981) reported a potential hybrid between Acmispon argophyllus (variety not specified) and A. glaber (variety not specified). Variety ornithopus (Greene) Brouillet is endemic to Guadalupe Island (Baja California, Mexico). In a phylogeographic study of A. agrophylus, L. E. Wallace et al. (2017) showed that the insular endemic varieties are distinct, although var. argenteus is paraphyletic to var. adsurgens, with var. niveus of Santa Cruz sister to all remaining varieties in the species, including the continental ones. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 11. | ||||||||||||||||
Parent taxa | Fabaceae > subfam. Faboideae > Acmispon | ||||||||||||||||
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Synonyms | Hosackia argophylla, Lotus argophyllus, Syrmatium argophyllum | ||||||||||||||||
Name authority | (A. Gray) Brouillet: J. Bot. Res. Inst. Texas 2: 388. (2008) | ||||||||||||||||
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