Astragalus lentiginosus var. yuccanus |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. albifolius |
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yucca freckled milkvetch, yucca milkvetch |
northern freckled milkvetch, Owens Valley milkvetch, white leaf milk vetch |
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Habit | Plants winter-annual or short-lived perennial, clump-forming, 15–60(–100) cm. | Plants perennial, halophyte, 30–100 cm. |
Stems | erect and ascending. |
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Leaves | (5–)7–16 cm; leaflets 13–21(–25), blades broadly elliptic, oval, rhombic-obovate, or obovate, (4–)6–21 mm, apex retuse or emarginate. |
2–9 cm; leaflets (9 or)11–17(–21), blades oblanceolate, elliptic, or narrowly oblong, (3–)5–15(–18) mm, apex obtuse or subacute. |
Racemes | loosely (12–)15–32-flowered, lax and open in fruit; axis early elongating, (4.5–)6–14 cm in fruit. |
(9–)12–35-flowered, crowded into subglobose or cylindric heads, short and compact in fruit; axis obscured, (0.5–)1–4 cm in fruit. |
Peduncles | (3–)5–10 cm. |
(1–)1.5–6.5 cm. |
Flowers | 11–15.6 mm; calyx 6–7.5 mm, tube 4.4–5.7 mm, lobes (1.3–)1.5–2.4 mm; corolla white or ochroleucous, concolorous, sometimes fading pale bluish, petals poorly graduated, banner slightly longer than wings, wings and keel nearly equal length. |
8.2–11.5 mm; calyx 5–7.3 mm, tube 3.2–4.5 mm, lobes 1.5–2.8 mm; corolla whitish, sometimes with purple veins, or pink-purple with white wing tips. |
Legumes | stramineous, plumply ovoid-acuminate or subglobose, strongly inflated, 15–25(–32) × 10–18 mm, bilocular, papery-membranous, subtranslucent, usually glabrous, rarely minutely strigulose; beak 3–7 mm, unilocular. |
pale green and purple-mottled becoming stramineous, plumply ovoid-acuminate, bladdery-inflated, 9–17 × 8–14 mm, papery-membranous, subtranslucent, strigulose; beak decurved, triangular, 3–5 mm, unilocular. |
Seeds | 17–26. |
10–15. |
2n | = 22. |
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Astragalus lentiginosus var. yuccanus |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. albifolius |
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Phenology | Flowering Feb–May. | Flowering Apr–Jul. |
Habitat | Open sandy plains, sandy or rocky washes, gulches in foothills of desert mountains, with Larrea and in yucca-grasslands. | Saline, summer-dry flats about seepage areas in lower foothills, on clay soils moist in springtime. |
Elevation | 500–1100 m. (1600–3600 ft.) | 600–1500 m. (2000–4900 ft.) |
Distribution |
AZ; NV |
CA |
Discussion | Variety yuccanus occurs in west-central Arizona, barely entering Nevada in the southern tip of Clark County. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Variety albifolius was described as an elongate, ungainly, trailing or scrambling halophyte (D. Isely 1998); it occurs at the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada in Inyo County near Big Pine and Lone Pine, near Muroc in Kern County, and near Lancaster in Los Angeles County. Astragalus albifolius (M. E. Jones) Abrams is an illegitimate later homonym of A. albifolius Freyn & Sintenis 1893. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Source | FNA vol. 11. | FNA vol. 11. |
Parent taxa | ||
Sibling taxa | ||
Name authority | M. E. Jones: Contr. W. Bot. 8: 3. (1898) | M. E. Jones: Rev. N.-Amer. Astragalus, 124. (1923) |
Web links |