Astragalus lentiginosus var. coachellae |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. vitreus |
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Coachella milkvetch, Coachella Valley milk vetch, Palm Springs freckled milkvetch |
freckled milkvetch, glass freckled 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, 15–40 cm. |
Stems | erect and ascending. |
glabrous or glabrate. |
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. |
4.5–10 cm; leaflets (7–)13–19, blades obovate-cuneate or oblong-obovate, (5–)7–17(–21) mm, apex obtuse or truncate-emarginate. |
Racemes | loosely 11–25-flowered, lax and open in fruit; axis (3–)4–10 cm in fruit. |
loosely (10–)15–27-flowered, lax and open in fruit; axis 4–8.5 cm in fruit. |
Peduncles | 3.5–8 cm. |
4–9.5 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. |
13.2–17 mm; calyx 6.5–8 mm, tube 4.6–5.7 mm, lobes (1.5–)1.7–2.3 mm; corolla pink-purple or lavender with white wing 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. |
pale green and unmottled turning pallid, usually broadly ovoid, rarely lunately lanceoloid-acuminate, usually strongly inflated, rarely less so, 15–25 × (7–)9–15 mm, papery-membranous, subtranslucent, lustrous, glabrous; beak triangular, short, unilocular. |
Seeds | 24–30. |
21–31. |
2n | = 22. |
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Astragalus lentiginosus var. coachellae |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. vitreus |
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Phenology | Flowering Feb–May. | Flowering Apr–Jun. |
Habitat | Sandy flats, washes, outwash fans, on dunes, in Larrea belt. | Gullied badlands and desert flats, on sand or clay derived from sandstone or limestone, on volcanic gravel. |
Elevation | -10–400 m. (-0–1300 ft.) | 800–1500(–2000) m. (2600–4900(–6600) ft.) |
Distribution |
CA |
AZ; 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 vitreus is found in the valleys of the upper Virgin River and Kanab Creek, southward to the northern slope of the Kaibab Plateau, and Toroweap and House Rock valleys in eastern Washington and western Kane counties in Utah, and northern Mohave and northwestern Coconino counties in Arizona. (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) | Barneby: Leafl. W. Bot. 4: 119, plate 3, figs. 30–33. (1945) |
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