Astragalus lentiginosus var. salinus |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. coulteri |
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harney milkvetch, sagebrush milk vetch, salty freckled milkvetch, salty loco milkvetch |
Borrego Springs milkvetch |
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Habit | Plants perennial, 6–30(–45) cm. | Plants winter-annual, 10–30 cm, herbage densely pubescent). |
Stems | ascending to erect, mostly unbranched. |
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Leaves | 4–10 cm; leaflets (9 or)11–19, blades broadly obovate, obovate-cuneate, obcordate, or oblong to oblanceolate, 5–20 mm, apex usually retuse or emarginate, surfaces glabrate to densely strigulose, hairs appressed or subappressed. |
6–10(–16) cm; leaflets (7–)15–19, blades broadly obovate-cuneate to elliptic-oblanceolate, 4–14(–21) mm, apex obtuse or emarginate to retuse. |
Racemes | 10–25-flowered, floriferous from middle to distalmost nodes, short and compact in fruit; axis 1.5–4(–9) cm in fruit. |
loosely 13–35(–48)-flowered; axis (4.5–)6–18(–26) cm in fruit. |
Peduncles | 2–4.5(–5) cm. |
5–10 cm. |
Flowers | 9.5–11.5 mm; calyx 5–6.4 mm, tube 3.6–4.2(–4.6) mm, lobes 1.2–2.2 mm; corolla whitish, sometimes wings and keel with lavender tips. |
12–14.8 mm; calyx 5.2–6.6 mm, tube 4–5.1 mm, lobes 1–2.3 mm; corolla pink-purple. |
Legumes | green or mottled becoming stramineous, obliquely ovoid or subglobose, strongly inflated, 14–26(–30) × (6–)7.5–14 mm, papery-membranous, translucent, glabrous or puberulent; beak 3–9 mm, unilocular. |
greenish stramineous, sometimes faintly mottled, lanceoloid to ovoid-acuminate, not or scarcely inflated, slightly turgid, 15–23 × 4.5–6 mm, ± bilocular, thin becoming papery, silky-strigulose-villosulous; beak short, unilocular. |
Seeds | (7–)16–25. |
(10–)13–20. |
2n | = 22. |
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Astragalus lentiginosus var. salinus |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. coulteri |
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Phenology | Flowering Apr–Jun. | Flowering late Feb–May. |
Habitat | Saline flats and playas upward to mountain slopes in sagebrush, oak, and other montane communities. | Sandy flats and semistabilized dunes, with Larrea. |
Elevation | 700–2600 m. (2300–8500 ft.) | 30–900 m. (100–3000 ft.) |
Distribution |
CA; ID; MT; NV; OR; UT; WY; BC |
AZ; CA; Mexico (Sonora) |
Discussion | Variety salinus, widespread in the northern and eastern portions of the Great Basin, occupies a crucial position in the Astragalus lentiginosus complex, serving to link many superficially disparate lines of differentiation (R. C. Barneby 1964). On the one hand, one can trace a sequence passing through var. floribundus to var. ineptus, and then to vars. antonius, idriensis, and sierrae. On the other hand, another strand leads through vars. lentiginosus and platyphyllidius to vars. chartaceus, diphysus, and finally australis. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Variety coulteri is found in the southern Colorado Desert, extending from eastern San Diego County in California, to the Yuma Desert in extreme southwestern Yuma County in Arizona, and adjacent Sonora, Mexico. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Source | FNA vol. 11. | FNA vol. 11. |
Parent taxa | ||
Sibling taxa | ||
Synonyms | A. salinus | A. coulteri, A. agninus, A. arthurschottii, A. lentiginosus var. borreganus |
Name authority | (Howell) Barneby: Leafl. W. Bot. 4: 86. (1945) | (Bentham) M. E. Jones: Contr. W. Bot. 8: 4. (1898) |
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