Astragalus goldmanii M.E.Jones

Slender perennial, with a taproot and ultimately knotty root-crown, rather densely strigulose or strigose and villosulous with straight and subappressed or almost wholly quite appressed, or sometimes with largely sinuous and spreading hairs up to 0.5-0.9 (1) mm. long, the stems and herbage cinereous or canescent, the leaves sometimes greenish, the leaflets glabrous, medially glabrescent, or rarely pubescent above; stems rather few, erect or ascending, 1.2—I dm. long, simple or branched from 1-5 nodes preceding the first peduncle, floriferous from about 5—8 nodes upward from near or below the middle; stipules 1.5—6 mm. long, the lowest firmly papery, the upper ones herbaceous, triangular-acuminate or lanceolate, semiamplexicaul; leaves 1.5—9 cm. long, the lowest petioled, the rest subsessile, with (13) 15-21 oblanceolate, elliptic-oblanceolate, or linear-elliptic, acute, subacute, or obtuse, flat or loosely folded leaflets 2-10 mm. long; peduncles erect or incurved, 3-10 cm. long, nearly always longer than the leaf; racemes (13) 20-60-flowered, the flowers early declined, at first approximate but soon scattered, the axis 6-18 cm. long in fruit; bracts submembranous, pallid, linear-lanceolate or subulate, 1.5-2.3 mm. long, deflexed in fruit; pedicels early recurved, at anthesis 0.3-0.5 mm. long, in fruit somewhat thickened, persistent, 0.8-1 mm. long; bracteoles 2, minute; calyx 2.7-3.6 mm. long, loosely strigulose or hirsutulous with white, black, or mixed hairs, the subsymmetric disc 0.4-0.6 mm. deep, the campanulate or turbinate-campanulate tube 1.5-2.1 mm. long, 1.4-1.8 mm. in diameter, the subulate or broadly triangular teeth 0.5-1.5 mm. long, the whole becoming papery, ruptured, marcescent; petals apparently ochroleucous drying yellow or yellowish, perhaps sometimes tinged with purple or purplish-blue; banner recurved through ± 50° (further in withering), ovate-cuneate or rhombic-oblanceolate to -elliptic, shallowly or deeply notched, 4-6 mm. long, 2.4-3.5 mm. wide; wings (0.1-0.8 mm. longer) 4.5-6.6 mm. long, the claws 1.6-2.1 mm., the oblanceolate to elliptic, obtuse, gently and evenly incurved blades 2.8-5 mm. long, 1.2-2.1 mm. wide; keel 3.7-4.7 mm. long, the claws 1.4-2.2 mm., the half- obovate blades 2.2—2.8 mm. long, 1.4—1.8 mm. wide, incurved through 90—105° to the broadly rounded apex; anthers 0.25-0.35 mm. long; pod deflexed, sessile, rather tardily deciduous, (3.5) 4-6 mm. long, 2-2.7 mm. in diameter, half-ovate in profile, rounded at base, shortly cuspidate at apex, obtusely triquetrous, keeled ventrally by the straight or slightly concave suture, grooved dorsally, the lateral angles plumply rounded, the thin, green, densely white- or partly black-strigulose valves becoming stramineous and ultimately brownish, papery, inflexed as a complete septum 0.7—2 mm. wide; dehiscence through both sutures and the septum, the halves of the pod ultimately separating; ovules 4—8; seeds olivaceous, purple- otted, pitted but sublustrous, about 2 mm. long.—Collections: 9 (o); representative: Palmer 440, 441 (GH, NY, US); E. W. Nelson 4708 (NY, US); G. L. Fisher 44,277 (ARIZ, NY, SMU); Gentry 6939 (MICH, NY).

In dry grassland and open oak or pine forest, sometimes on volcanic substrata, about 6000—7000 feet, both slopes of the Sierra Madre Occidental, from southcentral Chihuahua to northern Durango; one station in northern Nayarit.— Map No. 155.—July to October.

Astragalus Goldmani (Edward Alphonso Goldman, b. 1873, biologist and conservationist, collected widely in s.-w. United States and Mexico) Jones, Rev. Astrag. 281, Pl. 70. 1923.—"The type is No. 335619 National Herbarium, Goldman’s no. 119 from Parral Chihuahua, Mexico, September 16, 1898 ... ’’—Holotypus, US! isotypus, GH!—Hamosa Goldmani (Jones) Rydb. in Bull. Torr. Club 54: 332. 1927.

The Goldman milk-vetch has almost every character in common with A. vaccarum, except the greatly shortened and proportionately much broader pod. The vesture of the stems and leaves is commonly denser, varying from almost truly appressed to ascending and twisted, and the racemes elongate considerably during anthesis, the principal ones becoming very long narrow and interrupted in fruit. Flowers of almost all extant material appear yellowish or decidedly yellow and may have been ochroleucous when fresh. One recent collection, however, shows traces of bluish-purple on the banner and keel. Color of the petals is variable in sect. Micranthi, and the anthocyanin, even when present, is often fugitive.