Astragalus lentiginosus var. fremontii |
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Fremont's milk vetch, Frémont's freckled milkvetch |
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Habit | Plants annual, biennial, or perennial (short-lived), (4–)8–35(–40) cm. |
Leaves | (3–)4–9(–12) cm; leaflets (9 or)11–19, blades ovate- or obovate-cuneate, broadly oblanceolate, or rhombic-elliptic, 5–19 mm, apex usually obtuse or emarginate, rarely subacute. |
Racemes | loosely (8–)10–30-flowered, lax and open in fruit; axis (2.5–)4–11(–16) cm in fruit. |
Peduncles | 2.5–8.5(–10) cm. |
Flowers | 9.1–12(–12.4) mm; calyx (3.4–)3.8–6(–7.9) mm, tube (2.8–)3–4.5 mm, lobes (0.6–)0.9–2(–3.5) mm; corolla usually bright purple, rarely pink-lilac to pure white. |
Legumes | pale green, often purple-freckled or purple-mottled, usually broadly and plumply ovoid-acuminate, rarely quite narrowly so, nearly always bladdery-inflated, 14–27(–36) × (5–)8–18 mm, ± bilocular, papery-membranous, subtranslucent, glabrous or sparsely strigulose-villosulous; beak (2–)3–7(–10) mm, unilocular. |
Seeds | (17–)19–31. |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. fremontii |
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Phenology | Flowering late Mar–Jul (Sep–Oct). |
Habitat | Braided stream gravel in riparian communities, gravelly slopes in creosote bush, Joshua tree, juniper, pinyon-juniper, and Jeffrey pine communities. |
Elevation | 700–2500(–2800) m. (2300–8200(–9200) ft.) |
Distribution |
AZ; CA; NV; UT |
Discussion | Variety fremontii is common from southeastern California across southern Nevada to southwestern Utah and northwestern Arizona and may be very abundant when adequate moisture is available at an appropriate time. To the south and west, it grades into the larger-flowered var. variabilis; to the north in western Nevada, it grades into var. kennedyi. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Source | FNA vol. 11. |
Parent taxa | |
Sibling taxa | |
Synonyms | A. fremontii, A. fremontii subsp. eremicus |
Name authority | (A. Gray) S. Watson: Botany (Fortieth Parallel), 66. (1871) |
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