Astragalus lentiginosus var. yuccanus |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. variabilis |
|
---|---|---|
yucca freckled milkvetch, yucca milkvetch |
freckled milk vetch, victorville freckled milkvetch |
|
Habit | Plants winter-annual or short-lived perennial, clump-forming, 15–60(–100) cm. | Plants usually short-lived perennial, sometimes annual, (4–)10–40 cm, herbage usually cinereous, sometimes green or silky-canescent. |
Stems | erect and ascending. |
diffuse and ascending; ashy canescent or green. |
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. |
(2.5–)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. |
Racemes | loosely (12–)15–32-flowered, lax and open in fruit; axis early elongating, (4.5–)6–14 cm in fruit. |
loosely (10–)12–25-flowered, lax and open in fruit; axis (3–)4–15(–17) cm in fruit. |
Peduncles | (3–)5–10 cm. |
3–8(–9) 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. |
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. |
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 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. |
Seeds | 17–26. |
23–29. |
2n | = 22. |
= 22. |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. yuccanus |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. variabilis |
|
Phenology | Flowering Feb–May. | Flowering (Feb–)Mar–Jun. |
Habitat | Open sandy plains, sandy or rocky washes, gulches in foothills of desert mountains, with Larrea and in yucca-grasslands. | Sandy flats, washes, desert playas, sometimes on dunes, usually with Larrea. |
Elevation | 500–1100 m. (1600–3600 ft.) | 100–1000(–2100) m. (300–3300(–6900) ft.) |
Distribution |
AZ; NV |
CA; NV |
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 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.) |
Source | FNA vol. 11. | FNA vol. 11. |
Parent taxa | ||
Sibling taxa | ||
Name authority | M. E. Jones: Contr. W. Bot. 8: 3. (1898) | Barneby: Leafl. W. Bot. 4: 123, plate 4, figs. 1–8. (1945) |
Web links |