Astragalus lentiginosus var. coachellae |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. scorpionis |
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Coachella milkvetch, Coachella Valley milk vetch, Palm Springs freckled milkvetch |
scorpion 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, 5–30 cm. |
Stems | erect and ascending. |
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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. |
3–10 cm; leaflets 13–19, blades oval, obovate, or elliptic-oblanceolate, 5–15 mm, apex subacute, truncate, or retuse. |
Racemes | loosely 11–25-flowered, lax and open in fruit; axis (3–)4–10 cm in fruit. |
8–18-flowered, short and compact in fruit; axis 1.5–4(–5) cm in fruit. |
Peduncles | 3.5–8 cm. |
1.5–6(–8) 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. |
8.5–12.2 mm; calyx 4.2–7(–8.4) mm, tube 2.7–4.2(–5.3) mm, lobes 1.5–3.2 mm; corolla whitish or faintly lavender. |
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, usually mottled, becoming stramineous, broadly ovoid-acuminate, usually strongly inflated, 8–20(–25) × 4.5–12(–15) mm, stiffly papery, ± opaque, glabrous; beak 3–10 mm, unilocular. |
Seeds | 24–30. |
(7–)16–25. |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. coachellae |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. scorpionis |
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Phenology | Flowering Feb–May. | Flowering Jun–Aug. |
Habitat | Sandy flats, washes, outwash fans, on dunes, in Larrea belt. | Rocky crests, meadows, brushy hillsides, limber pine woodlands, mostly on limestone or limey clay soils, with sagebrush, to timberline. |
Elevation | -10–400 m. (-0–1300 ft.) | 2100–3400 m. (6900–11200 ft.) |
Distribution |
CA |
NV; UT |
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 scorpionis resembles forms of var. lentiginosus that have thin-walled, well-inflated fruits but is disjunct from that northern, lower elevation variety. Variety scorpionis is seemingly the only member of its species present in several Nevada ranges (Deep Creek, Diamond, Grant, Ruby, and White Pine). It is contiguous to two usually purple-flowered montane varieties, vars. latus and toyabensis (D. Isely 1998). (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Source | FNA vol. 11. | FNA vol. 11. |
Parent taxa | ||
Sibling taxa | ||
Name authority | Barneby in F. Shreve and I. L. Wiggins: Veg. Fl. Sonoran Desert, 695. (1964) | M. E. Jones: Rev. N.-Amer. Astragalus, 124. (1923) |
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