Dalea tentaculoides

  • Title

    Dalea tentaculoides

  • Authors

    Rupert C. Barneby

  • Scientific Name

    Dalea tentaculoides Gentry

  • Description

    126.  Dalea tentaculoides Gentry

    (Plate CXI)

    Suffruticose becoming fruticulose and 3-6 dm tall, the 1 or few primary stems bushy-branched from near base, either glabrous to the spikes or minutely thinly pilosulous with narrowly ascending hairs up to 0.2-0.3 mm long, the young branches green, striate, rather densely livid-tuberculate becoming in age brown and furrowed, the foliage green, the leaflets smooth above, prominently gland-punctate but little paler beneath; leaf-spurs 0.3-0.8 mm long; stipules subulate, pallid-green or whitish, 0.4-2 mm long, deciduous; intra- and post-petiolular glands prominent but small, blunt, purplish; primary cauline leaves 3-6 cm long, early deciduous and lacking from most flowering specimens (consequently little known), up to 3-6 cm long, with narrowly thick-margined, punctate rachis and 9-17 pairs of oblong-elliptic, elliptic, or obovate, nearly always emarginate, flat or shallowly navicular, obscurely or not dorsally carinate leaflets 2.5-8 mm long, the leaves of spurs shorter and simpler, 3-8 pairs, often smaller; spikes terminal to leafy spurs and branchlets, subsessile and short-pedunculate, moderately dense, ovoid-pyramidal becoming globose or shortly oblong, without petals or androecia 11-15 mm diam, the pilosulous axis 1-2 (2.5) cm long; bracts either persistent or tardily deciduous, (2.5) 3-5.5 mm long, narrowly elliptic- oblanceolate, attenuate both ends, pallid at base, distally green, thinly herbaceous, charged on back and margins with several subulate or prickle-shaped glands (sometimes a few obtuse or lens-like), dorsally pilosulous below middle or glabrous, ciliolate; pedicels 0 or obscure, subtended by minute gland-spicules; calyx 5.2-7.8 mm long, thinly pilosulous (pilose) with fine, spreading-ascending spiral hairs up to 0.8-1.2 mm long, the pale-golden, membranous tube 2.5-3.1 mm long, deeply recessed behind banner, the ribs filiform, not or scarcely prominent, concolorous, the pleated intervals glandless or charged with 1-2 minute glands, the narrowly lance-acuminate, green teeth of nearly equal length, the dorsal one 2.7-4.7 mm long (0.2-1.6 mm longer than tube), all resembling the bracts in texture and like them charged on back and margins with several subulate gland-prickles; petals bicolored, the banner opening whitish, early rubescent, the epistemonous ones rose-purple, inserted ± 1.5-2 mm from hypanthium, all charged with a subapical gland but otherwise glandless; banner 6.2-6.7 mm long, the claw 3-3.2 mm, the openly flabellate blade hooded distally, thickened at base but scarcely recessed into a cornet; wings 6.4-7.8 mm long, the claw 1.7-2.4 mm, the oblong-obovate or lance-ovate blade 4.9-5.8 mm long, 2.23 mm wide; keel 7.7-9.5 mm long, the claws 2.7-3.8 mm, the broadly elliptic-obovate blades 5-6.2 mm long, 3.2-4.4 mm wide; androecium 8-9.5 mm long, the longer filaments free for ± 2.6-3.5 mm, the connective gland-tipped, the anthers 0.75-0.95 mm long; pod ± 3 mm long, compressed, in profile triangular, the ventral suture longest, the style-base terminal, the prow slender-carinate, the valves glabrous and hyaline in lower half, thence thinly papery and pilosulous; seed ± 1.5 mm long.— Collections: 6 (o).

    Open rocky slopes in the oak-belt, up to ± 1350 m, rare and local, known only from the Sierrita and Baboquivari mountains in Santa Cruz and adjoining Pima counties, Arizona. — Flowering September-November, April- May. —Material: Arizona. Santa Cruz: typus; Pima (all from Baboquivari range): Gooddings. n. in 1935 (ARIZ); Baboquivari canyon, Peebles & Harrison 3965 (ARIZ), Loomis & Peebles 1597 (ARIZ); Toros canyon, Harrison & Kearney 8632 (ARIZ, US); Kitt Peak, L. Andrews in 1967 (NY).

    Dalea tentaculoides (of the long gland-prickles on bracts and calyx-teeth) Gentry, Madrono 10: 238, Pl. 18, 19, and fig. 2 (map). 1950.— "Type. Sycamore Canyon, between Nogales and Ruby, Arizona, May 9, 1941, Darrow s. n. (ARIZ, no. 30239..." — Holotypus, ARIZ!

    A species without obviously close kindred, but as noted by Gentry in the protologue possibly allied to D. versicolor sens. lat. The one member of the group sympatric with D. tentaculoides is D. versicolor var. sessilis, distinguished by its fewer pairs of leaflets, in primary cauline leaves mostly 4-9 (not 9-17), the thin texture and usually dense pilosulous vesture of the leaflets themselves, the fugacious interfloral bracts, and the absence of strangely elongate, "tentacular" gland-spurs. on these and the calyx-teeth. Gentry pointed out that rather similar but much less exaggerated glands are found occasionally in forms of what is here called D. versicolor sens, lat., but when present they coincide with pronounced blister-glands in the intercostal panels of the calyx-tube, absent or obsolescent in D. tentaculoides. The species is to be sought in outlying spurs of Sierra Madre south of the border in Sonora.