Astragalus Newberryi var. Newberryi

Leaflets 3-13 (15); calyx-tube (8.8) 10.4-13.7 mm. long, 3.7-6.2 mm. in diameter, the teeth (1.9) 2.5-6.5 mm. long; wings (20) 21-29 mm. long, the claws (10.7) 12-14.5 mm., the blades (9.3) 11-16.3 mm. long; keel-claws (11.2) 12-14.7 mm., the blades (6.8) 8-11 (12.2) mm. long, 3-4 mm. wide; anthers (0.55) 0.6-0.85 (0.95) mm. long.—Collections: 129 (xxxi); representative: Cronquist 7189 (NY, RSA); Ripley & Barneby 6468 (IDS, NY, RSA); Clokey 7993 (NA, WS); Maguire & Holmgren 25,243 (NY, RSA, UTC, WS); Train 2721 (NY, TEX); Jones 5197, 6227 (POM); Munz 13,738 (POM); Jones (from Peach Springs, Arizona) in 1884 (GH, NY, POM); Barneby 12,655 (CAS, RSA); Baker 420 (GH, NMC, NY, POM).

Plains, foothills, canyons, gullied knolls, and badlands, in dry gravelly or sandy clay soils of varied composition and origin, in equal vigor and abundance on sedimentary and eruptive bedrock, (2000-3300) 4300-7800 feet, commonly in sagebrush or juniper-piñon forest, widespread and locally plentiful throughout Nevada (except the northwest corner) and southwestern Utah, extending northwest into southeastern (and to remote stations at the foot of the Cascades in east- central) Oregon, and southwest into the Death Valley region and eastern Mohave Desert in California; also, somewhat less commonly, east across northern Arizona from Grand Canyon, Peach Springs, and the Bill Williams and Verde Valleys into northwestern New Mexico, thence sporadically east across the Continental Divide into the upper Rio Grande Valley, south in Arizona to the Natanes Plateau in Gila County.—Map No. 84.—April to June.

Astragalus Newberryi (Dr. John Strong Newberry, 1822-1892, geologist and naturalist with Lieut. Ives’s Expedition, 1857-8) Gray in Proc. Amer. Acad. 12: 55. 1876.—"On the frontiers of Utah and Arizona, Newberry. Canon east of Glenwood, Sevier County, Utah, at 7000 ft., Lester F. Ward on Powell’s Expedition, 1875."—Holotypus, collected by Newberry at Camp 74, n. borders of Arizona... lat. 36° 30', in 1858, GH! isotypi, NY, US (dated "April 16, 1858")!—The paratypus, Ward 223 = A. loanus described above.—Xylophacos Newberryi (Gray) Rydb. in Bull. Torr. Club 32: 662. 1905. A. Newberryi var. typicus Barneby in Amer. Midl. Nat. 37: 477. 1947.

Astragalus eriocarpus (with hairy pod) Wats. in Bot. King 71. 1871 (non DC., 1802).— "Found on the foothills of the Trinity and of the East and West Humboldt Mountains, Nevada; 6000 feet altitude ...No. 273."—Holotypus, labeled "Coyote Mountains, Nevada," Watson 237 in 1869, US! isotypus (dated "1868"), GH!—Tragacantha Watsoniana (Sereno Watson) O. Kze., Rev. Gen. 942. 1891, a legitimate substitute of epithet. Astragalus suturalis (presumably from the pod’s prominent ventral suture) Sheld. in Minn. Bot. Stud. 1: 23. 1894, a superfluous substitute. A. Watsonianus (O. Kze.) Sheld. in op. cit. 144. 1894. A. Newberryi var. eriocarpus (Wats.) Jones in Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci. II, 5: 676. 1895. A. Newberryi var. Watsonianus (O. Kze.) Jones, Contrib. West. Bot. 10: 68, Pl. 6. 1902.

Astragalus Newberryi var. castoreus (of beavers, from the Beaver Dam Mountains) Jones in Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci. II, 5: 658. 1895.—"No. 5006. April 4, 1894, Copper Mine, 18 miles west of St. George, Utah, in gravel, 5000° alt."—Holotypus, Jones 5006, POM! isotypi, NY, US (2 sheets)!

Astragalus Purshii X Newberryi Jones, Rev. Astrag. 216, 1923.—"This grows on the Sevier."—Lectotypus, Jones 5338e, collected at Marysvale, Utah, 21 May, 1894, POM!

Astragalus Purshii x Watsonianus Jones, Rev. Astrag. 216. 1923.—"This grows in eastern Nevada."—Lectotypus, Jones, collected at Aurum, Nevada, in May, 1893, POM! isotypus, NY!

The range of A. Newberryi extends over an immense crescentic area, of which the outer curve approximately follows the western and southern margins of the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. The crescent is bisected in northern Arizona by the Colorado River, and there is some evidence that racial differentiation between the series of populations to the north and south of the Grand Canyon is now in progress. The eastern branch, as typified by the original Newberry collection, is a dwarf plant with few (mostly 3-9) leaflets silvery-silky with exclusively straight hairs, relatively short calyx-teeth (rarely exceeding 3 mm.), and flowers of moderate length (the banner rarely over 2.5 cm. long). Northward from southcentral Nevada the average plant of the Newberry milk-vetch is of more robust mien, with more numerous leaflets beset with shorter curly hairs underlying the longer straight ones, and with calyx-teeth and flower as a whole ordinarily longer. Furthermore the pod of this coarse phase (= A. Watsonianus) tends to be more prominently beaked, and the beak itself is often more strongly incurved or even backwardly hooked. In southern Utah and Nevada, however, one finds many insensibly intergrading colonies or even single plants which effectively combine the ideal differences attributed to A. Newberryi and A. Watsonianus, so that definition of two races becomes impossible in practice.

Three remarkable forms of A. Newberryi, all deserving further study and possibly taxonomic status, must be mentioned here. The first is from the north slope of the Kaibab Plateau in Coconino County, Arizona (Barneby 12,672, CAS, RSA). It combines with the growth-habit and few leaflets of precisely typical A. Newberryi an extraordinarily small flower, with calyx only 9—9.5 mm. and teeth ± 1.6 mm. long, the banner and keel only 16.5—17 mm. and ± 13.5 mm. respectively. The plants would key to var. Blyae, but the leaflets are only 3-5. More collections are needed. The second is remarkable for having all leaves uni- or trifoliolate and densely silvery with closely appressed hairs. This ornamental form, of which I have seen no flowers, was collected at the extraordinarily low elevation of 2000 feet at the south end of the Aquarius Mountains, where Burro Creek crosses from Yavapai into Mohave County, Arizona (Benson & Darrow, 10,898, ARIZ. POM). The third was collected "on hard, dry alkaline flats, with Enceliopsis and Distichlis stricta, between Big Spring and Point of Rocks in Ash Meadows, southern Nye County, Nevada, at 2280 ft." (J. C. & A. R. Roos 6143, NY), at elevations far below the known limit of the species in the region and in an unusual habitat and environment. Unlike typical A. Newberryi. which everywhere forms a small tuft composed of one up to about half a dozen crowns, the Ash Meadows plant has an elaborately forking caudex impacted with white clay and very numerous crowns gathered into a low cushion or (according to the collectors’ field note) "dense round mats up to 4 dm. across." The specimens were collected in mid-June, and their faded flowers are unsuited for accurate dissection; but so far as I can determine, they have all essential characters of A. Newberryi, although the leaflets are small (2-5.5 mm. long) and the racemes reduced to one or possibly sometimes two flowers. The material suggests an ecotype of A. Newberryi analogous to the cushion-forms of Oxytropis oreophila and A. calycosus found on valley knolls (often with Enceliopsis) in Nevada (cf. Barneby, 1952, p. 214). Fragments of this interesting plant were collected on Ash Meadows as early as 1898 by C. A. Purpus (No. 6034, POM).