Astragalus crassicarpus var. Berlandieri

Similar to var. crassicarpus, distinguished principally by the slender, branching, subterranean caudex and consequently different growth-habit, but often bearing larger flowers and pods; herbage green, thinly strigulose and pilosulous with straight, appressed or narrowly ascending hairs up to (0.35) 0.45-0.75 mm. long, the calyx often quite thinly pubescent; stems 0.7—3 dm. long, subterranean for 1-15 cm., commonly quite slender; leaves (2.5) 5-12 (14) cm. long, with (15) 17-29 oval-elliptic, narrowly elliptic, or sometimes oval-obovate, obtuse, obtuse and mucronulate, or sometimes acute leaflets (3) 5-18 mm. long; peduncles 3-8 (11) cm. long; racemes 6-14-flowered, the axis 1-4 (5) cm. long in fruit; pedicels in fruit 2.8-4.5 mm. long; calyx (7.5) 7.9-12.7 mm. long, the. tube (5.3) 5.6-9.6 mm. long, (3) 3.6-4.8 (5.2) mm. in diameter, the teeth (2) 2.2-4 mm. long; petals lilac or pink-purple; banner (18) 18.5-25 (27) mm. long, 7-10 (11.2) mm. wide; wings (14) 15-23.3 mm. long, the claws (6) 6.4-11.2 mm., the blades (9) 10-13.5 mm. long, 2.1-3.8 mm. wide; keel (11.2) 12.2-20.7 mm. long, the claws (6) 6.5-11 mm., the blades (5.8) 6.5-10.2 mm. long, (2.7) 3-4 mm. wide; anthers 0.6-0.9 mm. long; pod globose or broadly and plumply oblong-ovoid or -obovoid, 2-4 cm. long, 1.7-2.7 cm. in diameter; ovules 34-50, averaging ± 41.—Collections: 38 (ii); representative: Jermy 17 (MO, NY); Shinners 9757 (OKLA, SMU); E. J. Palmer 13,267 (MO, WIS), 33,959 (NY); H. H. York (from Austin) in 1908 (CAS, NY, TEX); Lindheimer 744, 745 (NY, TEX).

Brushy hillsides and gravelly flats among oak thickets, sometimes on river bluffs or prairies, in rich loamy or silty soils overlying limestone or cretaceous clays, below 1500 feet, locally plentiful on and near the southeast escarpment of Edwards Plateau and extending rarely out onto the adjacent Coastal Plain but apparently not east of the Brazos River, Kerr and Gillespie to Washington and Victoria Counties, southcentral Texas.—Map. No. 101.—March to May, the fruit ripening from late April through summer.

Astragalus crassicarpus var. Berlandieri (Jean Louis Berlandier, d. 1851, pioneer botanist in Texas) Barneby in Amer. Midl. Nat. 55: 498. 1956, based on A. mexicanus (Mexican, inappropriate since 1824) A. DC., Mem. Soc. Bot. Geneve 6: 224, Pl. 3. 1833.—The species was described from plants grown in Switzerland "provenant de graines des bords de la riviere Guadelupe envoyes par M. Berlandier."—Holotypus, cultivated fragments preserved with Heyland’s original drawing, G! Berlandier’s collection from which the seeds were taken is labeled "circa el rio Guadalupe á Bejar, Avril, 1828, No. 2628." G, P!—Tragacantha mexicana (A. DC.) O. Kze., Rev. Gen. 946. 1891. Geoprumnon mexicanum (A. DC.) Rydb. ap. Small, Fl. S.E. U. S. 1332. 1902.

The loosely forking subterranean caudex of var. Berlandieri, suggestive of A. plattensis rather than A. crassicarpus, was first described by Jones (Contrib. West. Bot. 17: 28. 1930), although he failed to distinguish the two Texan astragali with this type of root. The growth- habit is strikingly different from that of other forms of A. crassicarpus, for the stems issue from the soil singly or in groups of two or three together, not all together in a clump; this is not always easy to recognize in carelessly collected specimens. Other differential characters assigned by Rydberg (1926, p. 162; 1929, p. 460, in clave) to Geoprumnon mexicanum, such as "whitish" flowers up to "3 cm. long" are either incorrect—the flowers are always purple and the banner rarely reaches 2.7 cm. in length—or are not diagnostic of a natural entity circumscribed by the habit of growth. In Travis County the flowers of var. Berlandieri vary considerably in size, the low extremes falling well within a range of variation established for var. crassicarpus. The relatively small number of ovules in the Berlandier ground-plum has no relation to the size of the ripe fruit.