Astragalus lentiginosus var. micans |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. wahweapensis |
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freckled milkvetch, shining freckled milkvetch, shining milk vetch |
wahweap freckled milkvetch |
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Habit | Plants perennial, clump-forming, 20–40 cm, herbage silvery- or white-silky, hairs 1.1–2 mm. | Plants perennial (short-lived, sometimes flowering first year), 10–25(–35) cm. |
Stems | diffuse and incurved-ascending. |
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Leaves | 4.5–9.5 cm; leaflets 11–17, blades usually narrowly to broadly obovate or ovate, rarely rhombic-suborbiculate, 5–14 mm, apex truncate-emarginate to subacute. |
(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 (12–)20–35-flowered, lax and open in fruit; axis (3.5–)4.5–10(–15) 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 | 4.5–9 cm. |
2.5–6(–7.5) cm. |
Flowers | 12.2–14.3 mm; calyx 6–7.6 mm, tube 4.5–4.9 mm, lobes 1.4–2.6 mm; corolla pink-lavender. |
(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 | green, unmottled, obliquely ovoid, inflated, 15–20 × 8–10 mm, bilocular, stiffly papery, densely silky-villous-tomentulose; beak 2.5–4 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 | 23–28. |
(20–)24–28. |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. micans |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. wahweapensis |
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Phenology | Flowering Apr–Jun. | Flowering Apr–Jul. |
Habitat | Forming large clumps over low slopes of mobile dunes. | Pinyon-juniper, sagebrush, and mixed desert shrub communities. |
Elevation | 900–1000 m. (3000–3300 ft.) | 1400–1900 m. (4600–6200 ft.) |
Distribution |
CA; NV |
AZ; UT |
Discussion | Variety micans is a local adjunct of the variable var. variabilis (D. Isely 1998), restricted to the southern end of Eureka Valley in Inyo County, California, and adjacent to Big Dune and in the Amargosa Desert, near Lathrop Wells in Nye County, Nevada. Isely questioned its recognition at varietal rank, initially considering it a local dune-specialized ecotype. Although it is ordinarily a strong perennial, some plants are evidently short-lived, a feature shared with var. coulteri. Variety micans is in the Center for Plant Conservation’s National Collection of Endangered Plants. (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: Leafl. W. Bot. 8: 22. (1956) | S. L. Welsh: Great Basin Naturalist 38: 286. (1978) |
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