Astragalus lentiginosus var. coachellae |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. salinus |
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Coachella milkvetch, Coachella Valley milk vetch, Palm Springs freckled milkvetch |
harney milkvetch, sagebrush milk vetch, salty freckled milkvetch, salty loco milkvetch |
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Habit | Plants winter-annual or perennial (short-lived, often flowering first year), clump-forming, (10–)15–30(–55) cm, herbage silvery-canescent, hairs to 0.7–1.2 mm. | Plants perennial, 6–30(–45) cm. |
Stems | erect and ascending. |
ascending to erect, mostly unbranched. |
Leaves | 5–11.5 cm; leaflets (7–)11–17(–21), blades broadly oval to obovate-cuneate or oblong-elliptic, 5–15(–17) mm, apex emarginate, or obtuse and apiculate. |
4–10 cm; leaflets (9 or)11–19, blades broadly obovate, obovate-cuneate, obcordate, or oblong to oblanceolate, 5–20 mm, apex usually retuse or emarginate, surfaces glabrate to densely strigulose, hairs appressed or subappressed. |
Racemes | loosely 11–25-flowered, lax and open in fruit; axis (3–)4–10 cm in fruit. |
10–25-flowered, floriferous from middle to distalmost nodes, short and compact in fruit; axis 1.5–4(–9) cm in fruit. |
Peduncles | 3.5–8 cm. |
2–4.5(–5) cm. |
Flowers | 12.7–14.5 mm; calyx 6.6–7.8 mm, tube 4.5–5.3 mm, lobes 1.7–2.9 mm; corolla pink-purple. |
9.5–11.5 mm; calyx 5–6.4 mm, tube 3.6–4.2(–4.6) mm, lobes 1.2–2.2 mm; corolla whitish, sometimes wings and keel with lavender tips. |
Legumes | usually mottled, broadly and obliquely ovoid-acuminate, greatly inflated, 16–21 × 9–14 mm, bilocular, stiffly papery, canescent-strigulose; beak 3.5–6 mm, unilocular. |
green or mottled becoming stramineous, obliquely ovoid or subglobose, strongly inflated, 14–26(–30) × (6–)7.5–14 mm, papery-membranous, translucent, glabrous or puberulent; beak 3–9 mm, unilocular. |
Seeds | 24–30. |
(7–)16–25. |
2n | = 22. |
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Astragalus lentiginosus var. coachellae |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. salinus |
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Phenology | Flowering Feb–May. | Flowering Apr–Jun. |
Habitat | Sandy flats, washes, outwash fans, on dunes, in Larrea belt. | Saline flats and playas upward to mountain slopes in sagebrush, oak, and other montane communities. |
Elevation | -10–400 m. (-0–1300 ft.) | 700–2600 m. (2300–8500 ft.) |
Distribution |
CA |
CA; ID; MT; NV; OR; UT; WY; BC |
Discussion | Variety coachellae occurs at low elevations in and around the Coachella Valley in Riverside County. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Variety salinus, widespread in the northern and eastern portions of the Great Basin, occupies a crucial position in the Astragalus lentiginosus complex, serving to link many superficially disparate lines of differentiation (R. C. Barneby 1964). On the one hand, one can trace a sequence passing through var. floribundus to var. ineptus, and then to vars. antonius, idriensis, and sierrae. On the other hand, another strand leads through vars. lentiginosus and platyphyllidius to vars. chartaceus, diphysus, and finally australis. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Source | FNA vol. 11. | FNA vol. 11. |
Parent taxa | ||
Sibling taxa | ||
Synonyms | A. salinus | |
Name authority | Barneby in F. Shreve and I. L. Wiggins: Veg. Fl. Sonoran Desert, 695. (1964) | (Howell) Barneby: Leafl. W. Bot. 4: 86. (1945) |
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