Astragalus lentiginosus var. wahweapensis |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. palans |
|
---|---|---|
wahweap freckled milkvetch |
freckled milkvetch, straggling milkvetch |
|
Habit | Plants perennial (short-lived, sometimes flowering first year), 10–25(–35) cm. | Plants perennial (sometimes short-lived), (10–)15–35(–40) cm, herbage green or subglabrescent. |
Stems | diffuse and incurved-ascending. |
|
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. |
(3.5–)5–11cm; leaflets 13–21(or 23), blades broadly obovate-cuneate, oblong-elliptic, oblong-oblanceolate, or suborbiculate-obcordate, (3–)5–17(–23) mm, apex obtuse, emarginate, or subacute, adaxial surface glabrous. |
Racemes | 10–20-flowered, flowering from middle and distally, compact to loose in fruit; axis 1.5–5.5(–7) cm in fruit. |
loosely (6–)10–28-flowered; axis elongating or not, (1–)2–12(–14.5) cm in fruit. |
Peduncles | 2.5–6(–7.5) cm. |
(3.5–)5–11 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). |
13.5–17.5(–18.3) mm; calyx 6.3–9.4 mm, tube 4.7–6.8 mm, lobes (0.9–)1.1–3(–4) mm; corolla 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. |
spreading, declined, or spreading-ascending, green becoming stramineous then blackish, ± straight to uniformly or hamately incurved, obliquely linear-lanceoloid to narrowly ovoid-acuminate, not or scarcely inflated, dehiscent on ground, (12–)15–27 × 4–8.5 mm, ± bilocular, somewhat fleshy becoming leathery or stiffly papery, glabrous or strigulose; beak 5–8 mm, unilocular. |
Seeds | (20–)24–28. |
20–42. |
2n | = 22. |
|
Astragalus lentiginosus var. wahweapensis |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. palans |
|
Phenology | Flowering Apr–Jul. | Flowering Apr–Jun. |
Habitat | Pinyon-juniper, sagebrush, and mixed desert shrub communities. | Salt-desert shrub, blackbrush, juniper, pinyon-juniper, and mixed desert shrub communities. |
Elevation | 1400–1900 m. (4600–6200 ft.) | 1100–1900 m. (3600–6200 ft.) |
Distribution |
AZ; UT |
AZ; CO; UT |
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 palans is known from northern Arizona, excluding the Coconino Plateau and upper Verde Valley, and from southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah. There is no substantial difference between material included within the concept of var. palans and Astragalus bryantii, which R. C. Barneby (1964) included within sect. Leptocarpi. S. L. Welsh (2007) considered it significant that fallen fruits, characteristic of var. palans, are included with the type collection of A. bryantii. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Source | FNA vol. 11. | FNA vol. 11. |
Parent taxa | ||
Sibling taxa | ||
Synonyms | A. palans, A. bryantii | |
Name authority | S. L. Welsh: Great Basin Naturalist 38: 286. (1978) | (M. E. Jones) M. E. Jones: Contr. W. Bot. 8: 4. (1898) |
Web links |