Astragalus lentiginosus var. variabilis |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. ineptus |
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freckled milk vetch, victorville freckled milkvetch |
freckled milkvetch, fumbling milk vetch, homely milkvetch |
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Habit | Plants usually short-lived perennial, sometimes annual, (4–)10–40 cm, herbage usually cinereous, sometimes green or silky-canescent. | Plants perennial, (1–)3–30 cm, herbage loosely strigulose or villosulous. |
Stems | diffuse and ascending; ashy canescent or green. |
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Leaves | (2.5–)4–13 cm; leaflets (7–)11–21(–25), blades obovate-cuneate to broadly oblanceolate or rhombic-elliptic, 4–15(–17) mm, apex usually obtuse or emarginate, rarely acute or subacute. |
1.5–5.5 cm; leaflets (9–)15–21, crowded, blades obovate or oblanceolate, (1–)2–10 mm, apex obtuse or retuse. |
Racemes | loosely (10–)12–25-flowered, lax and open in fruit; axis (3–)4–15(–17) cm in fruit. |
(4–)10–21-flowered, short and compact in fruit; axis (0.3–)1–2.5 cm in fruit. |
Peduncles | 3–8(–9) cm. |
0.5–2 cm. |
Flowers | 11.1–15 mm; calyx 4.7–6.5 mm, tube 3.7–5.2 mm, lobes 1–1.4(–1.5) mm, adaxial pair usually shortest; corolla pink- or magenta-purple. |
(8.8–)9.8–12 mm; calyx (4.8–)5.4–7.3 mm, tube (3.6–)3.9–4.9 mm, lobes (1–)1.2–2.4 mm; corolla whitish or cream, sometimes with pink tips. |
Legumes | pale green or mottled becoming stramineous, obliquely ovoid or subglobose, bladdery-inflated, (12–)15–27(–30) × 8–14(–15) mm, bilocular, stiffly papery, opaque, sparsely strigulose to densely and canescently strigose-villosulous; beak (3–)4–9 mm, unilocular. |
usually faintly mottled becoming stramineous, plumply ovoid- or ellipsoid-acuminate, strongly inflated, 10–18 × (5–)6–12 mm, thinly papery, strigulose or, sometimes, glabrous; beak erect or incurved, deltoid, 3–5 mm, unilocular. |
Seeds | 23–29. |
(12–)14–19. |
2n | = 22. |
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Astragalus lentiginosus var. variabilis |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. ineptus |
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Phenology | Flowering (Feb–)Mar–Jun. | Flowering Jun–Aug. |
Habitat | Sandy flats, washes, desert playas, sometimes on dunes, usually with Larrea. | Gravelly slopes, ridges, and talus, on coarse granitic sand or volcanic tuff, in bristlecone pine and alpine tundra communities. |
Elevation | 100–1000(–2100) m. (300–3300(–6900) ft.) | 1800–3700 m. (5900–12100 ft.) |
Distribution |
CA; NV |
CA |
Discussion | Variety variabilis is common and locally abundant in the southern and southwestern Mojave Desert, replacing var. fremontii, which is usually found to the north and east. Vestiture varies from ashy white to greenish. To the north in southern Inyo County, California, it intergrades with var. fremontii to the point that differentiation of the varieties is subjective. At low elevations in the central Mojave Desert it grades into var. coachellae. It also occurs on the floor of the upper San Joaquin Valley in Kern County, California, where it closely resembles var. nigricalycis except for the purple flowers. White-canescent plants of this variety also occur in Nye County in Nevada, west of Beatty. R. C. Barneby (1964) discussed intergradient populations more thoroughly. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Variety ineptus occurs along the eastern face of the Sierra Nevada from Alpine County southward to the Inconsolable Range, Inyo County, Sweetwater Mountains, Mono County, and Bonita Meadows, Tulare County. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Source | FNA vol. 11. | FNA vol. 11. |
Parent taxa | ||
Sibling taxa | ||
Synonyms | A. ineptus | |
Name authority | Barneby: Leafl. W. Bot. 4: 123, plate 4, figs. 1–8. (1945) | (A. Gray) M. E. Jones: Rev. N.-Amer. Astragalus, 124. (1923) |
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