Astragalus lentiginosus var. wahweapensis |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. idriensis |
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wahweap freckled milkvetch |
freckled milkvetch, New Idria milk vetch |
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Habit | Plants perennial (short-lived, sometimes flowering first year), 10–25(–35) cm. | Plants perennial, (10–)15–40 cm. |
Stems | diffuse and incurved-ascending. |
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Leaves | (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. |
(2–)3–11 cm; leaflets (7–)17–27(or 29), blades oval-obovate, obovate-cuneate, or broadly oblanceolate, (2–)3–15(–18) mm, apex truncate or emarginate. |
Racemes | 10–20-flowered, flowering from middle and distally, compact to loose in fruit; axis 1.5–5.5(–7) cm in fruit. |
7–20-flowered, short and compact in fruit; axis (0.5–)1–4 cm in fruit. |
Peduncles | 2.5–6(–7.5) cm. |
(1.5–)3–6 cm. |
Flowers | (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). |
(12–)14–19(–20) mm; calyx (5–)6.2–11 mm, tube (4.2–)4.7–7.2 mm, lobes (0.5–)1.3–3.4 mm; corolla brilliant or pale pink-purple. |
Legumes | 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. |
green, usually red-mottled, obliquely ovoid or lunately semi-ovoid, greatly or slightly inflated, 12–30 × 5-16 mm, semibilocular, somewhat fleshy becoming leathery or stiffly papery, strigulose, hairs usually white, rarely black; beak 3–10 mm, unilocular. |
Seeds | (20–)24–28. |
21–30. |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. wahweapensis |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. idriensis |
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Phenology | Flowering Apr–Jul. | Flowering Apr–Jun. |
Habitat | Pinyon-juniper, sagebrush, and mixed desert shrub communities. | Dry, grassy hillsides, canyon floors and benches, on shale or sandstone outcrops, in arid grasslands with blue oak, with foothill pine, among sagebrush. |
Elevation | 1400–1900 m. (4600–6200 ft.) | 300–2100 m. (1000–6900 ft.) |
Distribution |
AZ; UT |
CA |
Discussion | 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.) |
Variety idriensis occurs in and around the head of the San Joaquin Valley and in the South Coast ranges, where it is the only form of Astragalus lentiginosus with shortly racemose purple flowers that is native (R. C. Barneby 1964). (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Source | FNA vol. 11. | FNA vol. 11. |
Parent taxa | ||
Sibling taxa | ||
Synonyms | A. idriensis, A. tehachapiensis | |
Name authority | S. L. Welsh: Great Basin Naturalist 38: 286. (1978) | M. E. Jones: Contr. W. Bot. 10: 63. (1902) |
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