Astragalus lentiginosus var. albifolius |
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northern freckled milkvetch, Owens Valley milkvetch, white leaf milk vetch |
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Habit | Plants perennial, halophyte, 30–100 cm. |
Leaves | 2–9 cm; leaflets (9 or)11–17(–21), blades oblanceolate, elliptic, or narrowly oblong, (3–)5–15(–18) mm, apex obtuse or subacute. |
Racemes | (9–)12–35-flowered, crowded into subglobose or cylindric heads, short and compact in fruit; axis obscured, (0.5–)1–4 cm in fruit. |
Peduncles | (1–)1.5–6.5 cm. |
Flowers | 8.2–11.5 mm; calyx 5–7.3 mm, tube 3.2–4.5 mm, lobes 1.5–2.8 mm; corolla whitish, sometimes with purple veins, or pink-purple with white wing tips. |
Legumes | pale green and purple-mottled becoming stramineous, plumply ovoid-acuminate, bladdery-inflated, 9–17 × 8–14 mm, papery-membranous, subtranslucent, strigulose; beak decurved, triangular, 3–5 mm, unilocular. |
Seeds | 10–15. |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. albifolius |
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Phenology | Flowering Apr–Jul. |
Habitat | Saline, summer-dry flats about seepage areas in lower foothills, on clay soils moist in springtime. |
Elevation | 600–1500 m. (2000–4900 ft.) |
Distribution |
CA |
Discussion | Variety albifolius was described as an elongate, ungainly, trailing or scrambling halophyte (D. Isely 1998); it occurs at the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County near Big Pine and Lone Pine, near Muroc in Kern County, and near Lancaster in Los Angeles County. Astragalus albifolius (M. E. Jones) Abrams is an illegitimate later homonym of A. albifolius Freyn & Sintenis 1893. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Source | FNA vol. 11. |
Parent taxa | |
Sibling taxa | |
Name authority | M. E. Jones: Rev. N.-Amer. Astragalus, 124. (1923) |
Web links |