Astragalus lentiginosus var. wahweapensis |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. wilsonii |
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wahweap freckled milkvetch |
wilson's milkvetch |
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Habit | Plants perennial (short-lived, sometimes flowering first year), 10–25(–35) cm. | Plants perennial, 20–50 cm, herbage green or subglabrescent. |
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. |
(3.5–)6–16 cm; leaflets (11–)17–25, blades ovate, broadly elliptic, or oblong-obovate, (4–)6–20(–25) mm, apex obtuse to emarginate. |
Racemes | 10–20-flowered, flowering from middle and distally, compact to loose in fruit; axis 1.5–5.5(–7) cm in fruit. |
shortly and loosely (7–)10–17(–22)-flowered; axis not elongating, 1.5–4(–13) cm in fruit. |
Peduncles | 2.5–6(–7.5) cm. |
2.5–7(–8) 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). |
(14.2–)15–20 mm; calyx (7–)7.7–9.4 mm, tube (5.5–)5.7–7.7 mm, lobes 1.5–3 mm; corolla white or suffused or tipped pink or 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 or mottled becoming stramineous or brownish, narrowly lanceoloid-acuminate, scarcely to moderately inflated, (15–)20–35 × 3.8–7 mm, ± bilocular, stiffly papery, glabrous or puberulent; beak 5–10 mm, unilocular. |
Seeds | (20–)24–28. |
(29–)32–41. |
2n | = 22. |
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Astragalus lentiginosus var. wahweapensis |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. wilsonii |
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Phenology | Flowering Apr–Jul. | Flowering Feb–Jun. |
Habitat | Pinyon-juniper, sagebrush, and mixed desert shrub communities. | Ponderosa pine forests, oak and juniper communities on volcanic substrates. |
Elevation | 1400–1900 m. (4600–6200 ft.) | 900–2200 m. (3000–7200 ft.) |
Distribution |
AZ; UT |
AZ |
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 wilsonii occurs on the Coconino Plateau near Flagstaff and near the head of the Verde River in southwestern Coconino, northwestern Gila, and eastern Yavapai counties. Some plants share features with the closely adjacent, but still disjunct, var. maricopae, as discussed by S. L. Welsh (2007). M. E. Jones (1923) placed these in var. palans, a taxon well to the north. Provisionally, these unusual plants form a portion of what has traditionally been understood as var. wilsonii. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Source | FNA vol. 11. | FNA vol. 11. |
Parent taxa | ||
Sibling taxa | ||
Synonyms | A. wilsonii | |
Name authority | S. L. Welsh: Great Basin Naturalist 38: 286. (1978) | (Greene) Barneby: Leafl. W. Bot. 4: 139. (1945) |
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