Astragalus pycnostachyus

Stout, leafy perennial, with a thick taproot, pilose-tomentulose throughout with fine, short, sinuous or curly together with longer, straighter, ascending hairs up to 0.6-1.2 (1.7) mm. long, the stems thinly so (often glabrous basally), brown or purple-tinged, the herbage cinereous, canescent, or silvery-white, the leaflets equally pubescent on both sides, the inflorescence commonly black-hairy; stipules papery-membranous becoming scarious, fragile, and often irregularly deciduous in age, 3-12 mm. long, deltoid or triangular-acuminate or -caudate from a broad, amplexicaul or semiamplexicaul base, the lowest of the main stem and (commonly) of the branchlets or spurs connate at base or through half their length into a bidentate sheath (often ruptured by expansion of the stem), the median and upper ones mostly semiamplexicaul, free, all glabrous or very thinly pubescent dorsally; stems several or many, erect and ascending in clumps from a superficial or shallowly buried root-crown, 4—9 dm. long, striate and fistular, branched or spurred at several or almost all nodes preceding the first of the 3—11 peduncles, floriferous subterminally or from well above the middle; leaves 3—13 (15) cm. long, all but the lowest sessile or nearly so, with (23) 27-41 crowded, narrowly oblong, oblong, oblong-elliptic, or linear-lanceolate, obtuse or emarginate but apiculate, flat or loosely folded leaflets (0.2) 0.5—3 cm. long, all dorsally carinate by the midrib and diminishing upward along the rachis; peduncles erect or incurved-ascending, 2—9 cm. long, shorter than the leaf; racemes densely many- flowered, the flowers at full anthesis declined and retrorsely imbricated in cylindro- oblong, spikelike heads 2—7 (9) cm. long, 1.8—2.3 cm. in diameter, the axis little or not elongating, 2.5—8 (9.5) cm. long in fruit; bracts papery-membranous, narrowly lance-acuminate or linear-caudate, (1.2) 1.6—4 mm. long, commonly reflexed in fruit; pedicels at anthesis 0.7—1.2 mm. long, early arched outward and downward, in fruit scarcely thickened, 1—1.8 mm. long, persistent or perhaps very tardily disjointing; bracteoles 0; calyx 5.4-7.8 mm. long, villosulous with mixed black or fuscous and white hairs, the slightly oblique disc (0.6) 0.8-1.2 mm. deep, the ovoid-campanulate tube 3.7-5.2 mm. long, 2.7-3.9 mm. in diameter, the teeth 1.3-3 mm. long, the orifice more or less oblique, the whole becoming papery, ruptured, marcescent; petals greenish-white or cream-colored, poorly or irregularly graduated, the wings 0.6 mm. shorter to 0.3 mm. longer than the banner, the keel 0-1.1 mm. shorter than the wings; banner gendy recurved through about 35° (or further in withering), spatulate or rhombic-spatulate, shallowly notched or subentire, 7-10 mm. long, 4-5.2 mm. wide; wings 7.3-10.3 mm. long, the claws 3.5-5.5 mm., the obovate or broadly oblanceolate, obtuse or (when broad) obliquely emarginate, slightly incurved blades 3.4-5.4 mm. long, 1.8-3 mm. wide; keel 7.1-9.1 mm. long, the claws 4-5.5 mm., the half-obovate or obliquely oblong blades 3.1-4.2 mm. long, 1.7-2.5 mm. wide, abruptly incurved through 95-100° to the bluntly deltoid, obscurely porrect apex; anthers 0.45-0.6 mm. long; pod deflexed or declined, sessile, long-persistent on the receptacle, ovoid-lenticular, a little inflated but hardly bladdery, the body 6-11 mm. long, 3.5-6 mm. in diameter, broadly rounded at base, triangular-acute at apex and beaked by the incurved, persistent style, a little compressed laterally, bicarinate by the salient sutures (the ventral one thicker and more prominent), the lateral faces distended and convexly rounded toward the dorsal suture, the thin, green, glabrous or puberulent valves becoming papery, stramineous or brownish, somewhat lustrous, not inflexed, the funicular flange 0; dehiscence very tardy, apical; ovules (2) 3-12; seeds brown or greenish-brown, smooth, dull or sublustrous, 2-2.8 mm. long.