Astragalus lentiginosus var. coachellae |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. wahweapensis |
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Coachella milkvetch, Coachella Valley milk vetch, Palm Springs freckled milkvetch |
wahweap 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 (short-lived, sometimes flowering first year), 10–25(–35) cm. |
Stems | erect and ascending. |
diffuse and incurved-ascending. |
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. |
(2.5–)4–11 cm; leaflets 13–23, blades elliptic-oblanceolate, broadly oblong-oblanceolate, or obovate, (3–)5–17(–20) mm, apex obtuse or emarginate. |
Racemes | loosely 11–25-flowered, lax and open in fruit; axis (3–)4–10 cm in fruit. |
10–20-flowered, flowering from middle and distally, compact to loose in fruit; axis 1.5–5.5(–7) cm in fruit. |
Peduncles | 3.5–8 cm. |
2.5–6(–7.5) 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. |
(12.5–)15–18.2 mm; calyx (6.2–)7.5–10.5 mm, tube (4.6–)5.2–6.7 mm, lobes 1.4–3.8 mm; corolla usually bright pink-purple with pale, striate eye, rarely white (concolorous). |
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, sometimes stramineous or purple-mottled, almost always very strongly incurved, very obliquely ovoid-acuminate, moderately or greatly inflated, 15–30(–40) × (7–)9–15 mm, bilocular, thinly papery, semitranslucent, seeds visible, to almost leathery, opaque, usually glabrous, rarely puberulent; beak well-defined, triangular or deltoid, 6–15 mm, unilocular. |
Seeds | 24–30. |
(20–)24–28. |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. coachellae |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. wahweapensis |
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Phenology | Flowering Feb–May. | Flowering Apr–Jul. |
Habitat | Sandy flats, washes, outwash fans, on dunes, in Larrea belt. | Pinyon-juniper, sagebrush, and mixed desert shrub communities. |
Elevation | -10–400 m. (-0–1300 ft.) | 1400–1900 m. (4600–6200 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 wahweapensis may be very abundant in wetter years, filling the interspaces in pinyon-juniper woodland much like an alfalfa field. It is found on the plateaus and drainages affluent to Lake Powell in eastern Kane and Garfield counties in Utah, and in northern Arizona. Variety wahweapensis grades into the slender-podded var. palans to the east and the ovoid-fruited var. diphysus southward. (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) | S. L. Welsh: Great Basin Naturalist 38: 286. (1978) |
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