124.  Dalea radicans Watson

(Plate CXI)

Slender diffuse shrublets rising 1-2 dm from the ground, glabrous to the calyces except for minutely ciliolate stipules and bracts, the wiry procumbent smooth or remotely low-glandular, often livid stems often (but not always) rooting at tip and giving rise to short axillary distally leafy spurs terminating in a loose few-flowered raceme, the foliage small and sparse but thick-textured, often purple-tinged and glaucescent, the leaflets punctate beneath; leaf-spurs up to 1 mm long; stipules subulate, 0.7-1.5 mm long, firm and livid; intrapetiolular glands 0; post-petiolular glands prominent, conic; leaves very shortly petioled, 4-20 mm long, the primary cauline ones drought-deciduous, mostly gone by anthesis, with narrowly margined rachis and (4) 6-11 pairs of crowded linear-oblanceolate or linear, subsessile, emarginate, folded leaflets 1.5-4.5 mm long; peduncles terminal to young long-shoots and to erect, axillary spurs or short-shoots, 2-6 mm long; racemes loosely (4) 6-12-flowered, the axis finally 5-15 mm long; bracts early deciduous, lance-elliptic, navicular, 2-3 mm long, gland- verrucose distally on the back; pedicels 0.1-0.35 mm long; calyx 4.7-5.1 mm long, the tube livid-castaneous when young, either glabrous externally or pilosulous with scattered weak spiral hairs up to 0.5-0.7 mm long, the ribs prominent, the intervals becoming pallid, glossy but not hyaline, charged with 1 row of ± 4 small black or livid-orange glands, the triangular to triangular-short-acuminate, minutely gland- spurred teeth silky-pilosulous within, the dorsal one longest and narrowest, up to 1.8-2.5 mm long, the ventral pair shorter and broader; petals opening bicolored, the banner white, purple-margined, rubescent, the epistemonous ones violet-purple, perched well below middle of androecium, all charged with a subapical gland, the banner and keel also gland-sprinkled; banner 5-6.8 mm long, the claw 1.5-3.1 mm, the deltate- cordate or -ovate blade 4.1-5.7 mm long, 3.3-4.2 mm wide, its basal lobes incurved and adherent to the ventral face to form lateral pockets; wings 4.6-7.8 mm long, the claw 0.8-2.1 mm, the oblong-elliptic blade 4.1-5.7 mm long, 2-2.6 mm wide; keel 4.9-8.5 mm long, the claws 1.1-3 mm, the obovate blades 4.4-5.8 mm long, 2.7-3.2 mm wide; androecium 10-merous, 6-7.5 mm long, the longer filaments free for 1.1-1.3 mm, the anthers 0.7-0.8 mm long; pod 2-2.2 mm long, in profile obliquely triangular-obovate, the style-base terminal but excentric, the prow slightly thickened, the valves hyaline in lower 1/3, thence thinly papery, gland-sprinkled, and at tip minutely pilosulous; seed ±1.5 mm long. — Collections: 9 (ii).

Brushy hillsides and banks in the oak and pinyon-pine belts, on limestone or sometimes on gypsum, 1740-2350 m (5800-7830 ft), forming colonies but local and of restricted range on the dry w. slope and detached desert ranges of n. Sa. Madre Oriental in s.-e. Coahuila (mpos Cuatro Cienegas, General Cepeda, Saltillo, Arteaga) and adjoining Nuevo Leon (mpo Galeana). — Flowering March to May, July to October. — Material: Coahuila. Cuatro Cienegas: Sa. de San Marcos, M. C. Johnston et al. 10,304 (NY); General Cepeda: n. slope of Sa. de la Paila, M. C. Johnston 11,702 C (TEX); Saltillo: 24 km n.-w. of Fraile, Stanford, Wetherford & Northcraft 429b (ARIZ); 6 mi s.-e. of Saltillo, Palmer 549 (F, GH, NY); Carneros Pass, Pringle 2807 (A, MEXU). Arteaga: Saltillo mts. on road to Pto. de Flores, Boke & Massey 224 (MICH); Pto. de Flores, 20 mi s.-e. of Saltillo, Ripley & Barneby 13,284 (CAS, K, MEXU, MICH, NY, US); near San Antonio de Alanzanes (typus). Nuevo Leon. Galeana: 12 mi s. of Pablillo on road to Ascension, Ripley & Barneby 14,777 (NY).

Dalea radicans (rooting, of the procumbently arching stems) Wats., Proc. Amer. Acad. 17: 341. 1882.— "In the Sierra Madre, south [= e.-s.-e.] of Saltillo ([Palmer] 214)." — Holotypus, collected in late July, 1880, GH! isotypi, NY (2 sheets), US!— Parosela radicans (Wats.) Rose, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. 8: 305. 1905.

An attractive little procumbent shrublet with livid wiry branchlets, neat sparse foliage of a livid green or glaucescent hue, and modest spiciform racemes of a few violet and white flowers. The plants are seasonally dimorphic, producing in the rainy season pliant long-shoots with internodes longer than the leaves and sometimes bearing a terminal inflorescence below a seemingly continuous, really sympodial secondary axis, and in the dry season, from axils of drought-deciduous cauline leaves, stiffly erect short-shoots clothed in smaller leaves and terminating in a smaller, often subcapitate raceme. It is the long-shoots that take root where they touch the ground, but many fail to do so. Most of the flowers, as in D. saffordii, are borne on short-shoots.