Astragalus lentiginosus var. yuccanus |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. wahweapensis |
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yucca freckled milkvetch, yucca milkvetch |
wahweap freckled milkvetch |
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Habit | Plants winter-annual or short-lived perennial, clump-forming, 15–60(–100) cm. | Plants perennial (short-lived, sometimes flowering first year), 10–25(–35) cm. |
Stems | erect and ascending. |
diffuse and incurved-ascending. |
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–)4–11 cm; leaflets 13–23, blades elliptic-oblanceolate, broadly oblong-oblanceolate, or obovate, (3–)5–17(–20) mm, apex obtuse or emarginate. |
Racemes | loosely (12–)15–32-flowered, lax and open in fruit; axis early elongating, (4.5–)6–14 cm in fruit. |
10–20-flowered, flowering from middle and distally, compact to loose in fruit; axis 1.5–5.5(–7) cm in fruit. |
Peduncles | (3–)5–10 cm. |
2.5–6(–7.5) 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. |
(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). |
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. |
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. |
Seeds | 17–26. |
(20–)24–28. |
2n | = 22. |
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Astragalus lentiginosus var. yuccanus |
Astragalus lentiginosus var. wahweapensis |
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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. | Pinyon-juniper, sagebrush, and mixed desert shrub communities. |
Elevation | 500–1100 m. (1600–3600 ft.) | 1400–1900 m. (4600–6200 ft.) |
Distribution |
AZ; NV |
AZ; UT |
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 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.) |
Source | FNA vol. 11. | FNA vol. 11. |
Parent taxa | ||
Sibling taxa | ||
Name authority | M. E. Jones: Contr. W. Bot. 8: 3. (1898) | S. L. Welsh: Great Basin Naturalist 38: 286. (1978) |
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