Dalea searlsiae
Rupert C. Barneby
35. Dalea searlsiae (Gray) Barneby
(Plate LIII)
Perennial herbs from a woody root and short caudex, (2.5) 3-5.5 dm tall, commonly glabrous (except for ciliolate stipules) up to the spikes, more rarely villosulous throughout with fine spreading hairs up to 0.2-0.5 mm long, the several stems either diffuse and incurved or erect and ascending in clumps, pallid, striate-ribbed, ± tuberculate, leafy through lower 1/2-1/3 and bearing axillary leafy spurs at most nodes, either monocephalous or some lateral shoots from near base or near middle developed and going out into a spike shorter than the terminal one, the foliage pallid green or sub- glaucescent, the thick-textured leaflets not or scarcely bicolored, smooth and green above, gland-tuberculate beneath; leaf-spurs 0.2-1 mm long; stipules narrowly subulate or linear, castaneous or castaneous-tipped, 1-2.5 (3) mm long, early papery and fragile; intrapetiolular glands present, small; post-petiolular glands large, prominent, obtuse; leaves short-petioled, the main cauline ones 2-5.5 cm long, with narrowly thick-margined, ventrally grooved rachis and 2-3 (4) pairs of narrowly to broadly oblanceolate, oblong-elliptic, or obovate, emarginate, obtuse, or bluntly gland-mucronulate, usually folded and often backwardly arched leaflets up to 7-17 (20) mm long, the terminal one at least slightly longer than last pair; peduncles (2.5) 4-16 (20) cm long; spikes moderately dense but not conelike, the flowers (pressed) falling into ±3-4 irregular ranks and often partially exposing the villosulous or glabrate axis, without petals narrowly oblong-cylindroid, (8) 9-11 mm diam, (1.5) 2-9 (14) cm long; bracts mostly deciduous by late anthesis, hardly dimorphic except the lowest a trifle firmer and broader than the rest, the interfloral ones 3-5 (6) cm long, folded and scarious at base, lanceolate or lance-caudate and firm distally, dorsally pilose, pilosulous, or glabrous, sparsely glandular, commonly livid-tipped; calyx (3.2) 3.5-4.6 (4.8) mm long, variably pubescent, always pilose or pilosulous on and within the teeth with weak spreading hairs up to 0.4-1.3 mm long, the ovoid tube varying from densely pilosulous to glabrous, this 2-2.8 mm long, deeply cleft behind banner, the ribs slender, not prominent, the pallid submembranous intervals often flecked with lines of castaneous cells, glandless or charged above middle with 2-4 small pale glands, the teeth of ± equal length but dissimilar in shape, the dorsal 3 lance-subulate, (0.8) 1-2.2 mm long (0.2-1.4, rarely 1.9 mm shorter than tube), the ventral pair deltate- ovate, all green or livid at tip; petals rose-purple, eglandular (or banner rarely charged at base of blade with 2 (4) minute glands); banner 5.3-7.2 mm long, the claw (2.5) 2.7-3.5 mm, the ovate, ovate-deltate, or narrowly ovate-oblong, usually subcordate, obtuse or emarginate, slightly hooded blade 2.8-3.7 mm long, 2.2-3.4 mm wide; epistemonous petals (3.6) 3.8-4.8 mm long, the claw 0.6-0.9 mm, the oblong or oblanceolate, truncate-emarginate or very obtuse blades either tapering or abruptly narrowed at base, (2.7) 3-4.1 mm long, (0.9) 1.1-1.6 mm wide; androecium 5.5-8.5 mm long, the column (2.2) 2.6-3.6 mm, the free filaments (3) 3.4-5.1 mm long, usually pink, the yellow anthers 1.1-1.5 mm long; pod half-obovate in profile, 3.2-4 mm long, the style-base latero-terminal, the prow moderately thickened, the valves papery except at extreme base, distally gland-sprinkled, either pilosulous or subglabrous; seed 2-2.8 mm long. — Collections: 59 (vii).
Dry bluffs and hillsides, sandy and rocky flats, sometimes on clay knolls of the valley floor, commonly calciphile but sometimes on sandstones and perhaps other bedrock, (1100) 1230-1980 m (3700-6600 ft), in Inyo Mts. rarely to 2280 m (7600 ft), widespread and locally abundant over the s. half of Nevada, s.-w. Utah, and adjoining California and Arizona, w. into the edge of the Mohave Desert (Providence and New York mountains), Death Valley, and Inyo Mts., n. in Nevada to Paradise Range in Churchill Co. and the Snake Range in White Pine County, s. in Arizona to Coconino Plateau in n.-w. Mohave and Coconino counties, e. up the Virgin River and through the Dixie Corridor into the w. margins of the Canyonlands, in Utah to the Pahna River and Aquarius Plateau and in Arizona to the lower Little Colorado and Painted Desert in Coconino County; apparently disjunctly around the w. margin of Salt Lake Desert in e. Elko County, Nevada, and adjoining Box Elder County, Utah; cf. Wemple, 1970, map 10. — Flowering mid-May to mid-July. —Representative: California: Wolf 3635 (NY, POM); Alexander & Kellogg 1401 (NY, UC); Roos & Roos 6167 (NY). Nevada: Clokey 7155, 7158 (NY, UC, widely distributed); Maguire & Holmgren 25,409 (NY, UC); Barneby 14,399 (CAS, NY, IA), 14,414 (CAS, NY, US); Maguire 12,306 (NY, UC); Holmgren, Reveal & LaFrance 2099 (NY, widely distributed). Arizona: Maguire 12,238 (NY); Barneby 14,439 (CAS, NY, IA, US); Holmgren f 3320 (NY and widely distributed).
Dalea searlsiae (Gray) Barneby, comb. nov., based on Petalostemon searlsiae (the collector) Gray, Proc. Amer. Acad. 8: 380. 1872. - "...Pahranagat Mountains in Southeastern Nevada (about 400 miles southwest of Salt Lake)...Miss Searls... vicinity of Pahranagat mines..." — Holotypus, collected in May, 1871, GH! isotypus, K!—Kuhniastera searlsiae (Gray) O. Kze., Rev. Gen. 192. 1891.
A quaintly attractive but hardly ornamental plant, notable for its narrowly cylindric, amentlike spike of calyces. In habit and foliage it resembles D. flavescens and D. ornata, differing from both in the loose spike, from the latter further in its firm-textured calyx, and from D. flavescens further in its purple petals. The closer relationship certainly lies with D. flavescens, even though Rydberg (1920, p. 128, 135) assigned the two species to separate groups, artificially characterized by color of the flower. Wemple (1970, p. 61), whom I follow here in everything but nomenclature, has united Rydberg’s Ornati and Compacti, and placed their members in perspective.
Over its entire range and at all known peripheral stations D. searlsiae has glabrous stems and foliage. It was this form that Gray described from Lincoln County, but in this very region occur populations (e. g. n. of Pioche, Barneby 14,408) with consistently pilosulous stems and leaves, and others (e.g. Sunnyside, n.-e. Nye County, Barneby 14,404) partly glabrous and partly pubescent in stem, or leaf, or both. By contrast D. flavescens is usually pilosulous, a glabrous phase appearing very locally near the middle of its range. Where D. searlsiae and D. flavescens converge in the drainage of the Pahria River in Kane County, Utah, each appears in its commoner guise.
The recent reduction of D. searlsiae to D. ornata, inconspicuously proposed by Welsh in the protologue of D. epica (q. v., under D. flavescens, immediately preceding) is unrealistic and unacceptable.
References: [Article] Barneby, Rupert C. 1977. Daleae Imagines, an illustrated revision of Errazurizia Philippi, Psorothamnus Rydberg, Marine Liebmann, and Dalea Lucanus emen. Barneby, including all species of Leguminosae tribe Amorpheae Borissova ever referred to Dalea. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 27: 1-892.Multimedia:
