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Habit Herbs perennial (sometimes flowering as annual), usually tuft- or mat-forming, acaulescent, subacaulescent, or caulescent; caudex usually superficial or aerial, sometimes subterranean.
Stems

(when present) obsolete, single, few, or several to many.

Leaves

odd-pinnate, usually petiolate, rarely short-petiolate or subsessile;

leaflets (1 or)3–39(–43).

Racemes

subcapitate to loosely flowered, flowers erect, ascending, spreading, declined, or nodding, secund, and retrorsely imbricate.

Corollas

purple, pink-purple, magenta-purple, violet, bluish, lilac, scarlet, ochroleucous, greenish white, or white, banner barely recurved (A. phoenix) or recurved through 20–50° (90–100° in A. accumbens), keel apex obtuse.

Calyx

tubes cylindric or deeply campanulate.

Legumes

usually deciduous, usually sessile, rarely subsessile or substipitate, gynophore sometimes present, usually ascending (humistrate), less often spreading or pendulous, subglobose to ellipsoid, narrowly lanceoloid, ovoid or oblong-ellipsoid, or lanceoloid-ovoid, straight or usually incurved, usually compressed dorsiventrally, sometimes obcompressed, 3-sided, turgid, or inflated, unilocular, subunilocular, or bilocular.

Seeds

11–70.

Hairs

basifixed or malpighian.

Stipules

distinct (except anomalous forms of A. missouriensis, A. tephrodes, and A. zionis).

Astragalus sect. Argophylli

Distribution
w North America; n Mexico
Discussion

Species 44 (44 in the flora).

Section Argophylli comprises ten subsections, widespread in western North America from southern British Columbia and Saskatchewan southward to northern Baja California, northern Sonora, and western Texas.

The subsections are: subsect. Argophylli (A. Gray) M. E. Jones (Astragalus argophyllus, A. callithrix, A. columbianus, A. cyaneus, A. desereticus, A. eurylobus, A. henrimontanensis, A. iodopetalus, A. piutensis, A. shortianus, A. tephrodes, A. tidestromii, A. uncialis, A. zionis); subsect. Pseudargophylli Barneby (A. feensis, A. waterfallii); subsect. Neomexicani Barneby (A. neomexicanus); subsect. Newberryani M. E. Jones (A. eurekensis, A. loanus, A. musiniensis, A. newberryi, A. phoenix, A. welshii); subsect. Concordi S. L. Welsh (A. concordius); subsect. Coccinei M. E. Jones (A. coccineus); subsect. Eriocarpi (A. Gray) Barneby (A. anserinus, A. funereus, A. inflexus, A. leucolobus, A. nudisiliquus, A. purshii, A. subvestitus, A. utahensis); subsect. Parryani Barneby (A. parryi); subsect. Missourienses M. E. Jones (A. accumbens, A. amphioxys, A. castaneiformis, A. chamaeleuce, A. consobrinus, A. cymboides, A. laccoliticus, A. missouriensis, A. piscator); and subsect. Anisi Barneby (A. anisus).

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)

Source FNA vol. 11.
Parent taxa Fabaceae > subfam. Faboideae > Astragalus
Subordinate taxa
Name authority A. Gray: Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts 6: 209. (1864)
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